1.5B judgement against MS overturned

[Slugbait]

There are several hundred companies breathing a HUGE sigh of relief right now.

Link

 

[dmcowen674]

I say pull he plug on all technology.

Everything infringes just existing these days.

 

[Gneisenau]

The patent system is sorely screwed up. I'm glad to see the judge in this case use some common sense. (IMO) I agree that some things should be patentable, but there are a lot of things that should not be patentable that have been. (Anyone's genes for instance, or that little spring that goes into the middle of whole mechnism.)
It's really time for them to remove concept patents from software or parts of a whole. Items that are patentable should be limited to items which are useful on their own. (Like a clock and not a brakcet in the clock.)
Same with software. Code concepts should not be patentable. Code can be copyrighted and so should not be patentable. (I don't think it is actually patentable now.)
There needs to be some real though put into a revamp of the patent process.

 

[zephyrprime]

MS has done a lot of bad stuff over the years but this isn't one of them. I'm glad they threw this out and yes, the patent system is screwed up. The copyright system is screwed up also.

 

[imported_Shivetya]

Originally posted by: Slugbait
There are several hundred companies breathing a HUGE sigh of relief right now.

Link

the jury, like most juries, was packed with people too stupid to be on a jury.

You don't award punitive damages when the defendant made a good faith attempt to license the technology. This case resolved around one company licensing technology to MS and another coming along claiming it was wrong for MS to license it from the first!

 

[Mxylplyx]

Seems judges are always having to overturn retarded decisions made by the retards in this countries jury pool. Average idiot on the street cant possibly be able to interpret our retarded patent laws, written by the retards in Washington. We need professional juries in this country that specialize in the fields the cases they hear deal with.

For an example on how stupid juries can be, see the case where Richard Scrushy was acquitted of the massive accounting fraud at Healthsouth, which cost me my job. The case was to be heard in Birmingham, a predominantly black city, so out of a sudden Mr. millionaire acquired a taste for black churches, and donated heavily to them. We all watched from the burbs as Scrushy played the blacks like a fiddle, and he skirted the charges since the jury was mostly black. After that, he suddenly lost his taste for black churches, and then they got pissed because they got played.

Got a different set of charges later in Montgomery in federal court, outside of his area of influence. They nailed his ass, and now he's sitting in jail.

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: Gneisenau
The patent system is sorely screwed up. I'm glad to see the judge in this case use some common sense. (IMO)

Which of the judge's opinions show this "common sense?" Alcatel-Lucent's statement in the article at your link says the judge reversed some of his own rulings, as well as overriding the jury's decision.

?This reversal of the judge?s own pretrial and post-trial rulings is shocking and disturbing, especially since ? after a three-week trial and four days of careful deliberation ? the jury unanimously agreed with us, and we believe their decision should stand,? said Mary Lou Ambrus, a spokeswoman for Alcatel-Lucent, in an e-mail. ?We still have a strong case and we believe we will prevail on appeal.?

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
MS has done a lot of bad stuff over the years but this isn't one of them.

And you know this how?

I don't know enough about the facts to comment about the legitimacy of Alcatel-Lucent's claims, but as a holder of both patents and copyrights, I strongly favor protection of the legitimate rights of those who create intellectual property.

As you said, Microsoft has done "a lot of bad stuff over the years." That includes a history of trampling other people's and companies' intellectual property rights just because they have the funding to do it, and they think it will cost them less to fight the litigation than to pay the legitimate inventors of the property they steal.

They're not alone, but that doesn't make it right. Do you have any special knowledge of the technology, itself, or the applicable law, or any other facts not considered, misinterpreted or misapplied by the jury in this case?

A patent is issued only after the application has been reviewed by a skilled examiner at the patent office. The basic requirements for a patent are that the idea must be new, useful and unobvious to one knowledgeable in the field of the patent. Once a patent is issued, it raises a presumption that it is valid until a challenger is able to disprove the merits of the patent.

If Alcatel-Lucent establishes the merits and uniqueness of their patent claims, and Microsoft didn't have a valid license to use it, they should compensate Alcatel-Lucent for using the patented intellectual property.

 

[piasabird]

If Microsoft doesnt have to uphold Patents and software license, why should we?

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: Harvey

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
MS has done a lot of bad stuff over the years but this isn't one of them.

And you know this how?

I don't know enough about the facts to comment about the legitimacy of Alcatel-Lucent's claims...

If Alcatel-Lucent establishes the merits and uniqueness of their patent claims, and Microsoft didn't have a valid license to use it, they should compensate Alcatel-Lucent for using the patented intellectual property

To begin with, Alcatel had nothing to do with the patents. Bell Labs (later known as Lucent Technologies), worked with the Fraunhofer Institute on music compression technology about 17 years ago.

The problem is that Lucent owned patents relating to AAC...not for MP3. The patents for MP3 were owned by Fraunhofer, and as a result, Fraunhofer sold licensing to hundreds of companies. Lucent didn't get a dime.

Unfortunately, Alcatel-Lucent somehow were able to prove to a jury that MS infringed on patents that Alcatel did not own. They furthermore convinced the jury that there also was no collaboration between Bell Labs and Fraunhofer on the patents. As such, the original verdict left the door wide open for Alcatel-Lucent to file literally hundreds of other patent infringment lawsuits against companies who paid their money to Fraunhofer instead of paying those licensing fees to Lucent.

Fraunhofer has publicly stated they were dismayed at the original verdict. You can bet that they were scared stiff as well...they'd probably be the next company sued (into bankruptcy) by Alcatel-Lucent for licensing patents they supposedly didn't own.

Alcatel-Lucent was poised to become one of the richest liquid companies in the world. With yesterday's reversal against MS, that dream came to a dead stop.

 

[smack Down]

That sucks the only way to get the patent system fixed is for companies like Microsoft to get screwed more then they are able to screw smaller companies.