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[News] Patent Trolls in PaaS, Microsoft Loses Billions to Software Patents

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PaaS and the patent trolls

,----[ Quote ]
| If the advent of PaaS stirs up a plague of patent trolls to resurrect 
| long-dead patents and bring suits against providers or users it could become 
| a nightmare for the nascent industry. The providers who suffer most will be 
| those based in countries that enforce business methods patents most 
| rigorously: the United States, Australia, Japan and Singapore, according to 
| Wikipedia’s article on the topic. In contrast, “patent protection for 
| business method patents in Israel, China, India, Mexico, and most of Europe 
| is difficult.”       
`----

http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=528

Infringement claims detailed

,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft Corp. violated an Alcatel-Lucent patent to produce its Xbox 
| video-game player, a lawyer for Alcatel-Lucent told jurors who are 
| considering a demand for $419 million in damages.  
| 
| "They've taken" the patent "and made millions and millions of dollars," John 
| Desmarais, a lawyer for Alcatel- Lucent, said to the jury. 
| 
| [...]
| 
| A jury in the same court decided last year that Microsoft's Windows Media 
| Player infringed patents for the MP3 digital-audio standard and awarded 
| Alcatel-Lucent a record $1.52 billion in damages. Senior U.S. District Judge 
| Rudi Brewster vacated that verdict, now under appeal.   
| 
| In the second trial, another jury concluded April 4 that Microsoft should pay 
| $368 million to Alcatel-Lucent for infringing two patents. 
`----

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/365142_msftalcatel30.html


Related:

Who is the world's biggest patent troll?

,----[ Quote ]
| In two consecutive days, The Wall Street Journal presented two different
| answers. The first is not surprising: Intellectual Ventures, the brainchild
| of ex-Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold. It's now out "to raise as much as
| $1 billion to help develop and patent inventions, many of them from
| universities in Asia."  
`----

http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9816163-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20


Playing Microsoft Patent Poker

,----[ Quote ]
| This time though, while Ballmer slinks away to try to con … convince people
| that Microsoft Unified Communications somehow offers people more than what
| Cisco's VOIP (voice over IP) been offering customers for years, a patent
| attack finally launches at Linux. Specifically, IP Innovation, a subsidiary
| of Acacia Technologies Group, has filed a patent infringement claim against
| Linux distributors Novell and Red Hat.    
|
| So was it just timing, or was it something more? Let's take a look at the
| players.  
`----

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2201579,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03129TX1K0000616


Ideas Are Everywhere... So Why Do We Limit Them?

,----[ Quote ]
| Gladwell uses this to talk up what Myhrvold is doing, suggesting that
| Intellectual Ventures is really about continuing that process, getting those
| ideas out there -- but he misses the much bigger point: if these ideas are
| the natural progression, almost guaranteed to be discovered by someone sooner
| or later, why do we give a monopoly on these ideas to a single discoverer?
| Myhrvold's whole business model is about monopolizing all of these ideas and
| charging others (who may have discovered them totally independently) to
| actually do something with them. Yet, if Gladwell's premise is correct (and
| there's plenty of evidence included in the article), then Myhrvold's efforts
| shouldn't be seen as a big deal. After all, if it wasn't Myhrvold and his
| friends doing it, others would very likely come up with the same thing sooner
| or later.
|
| This is especially highlighted in one anecdote in the article, of Myhrvold
| holding a dinner with a bunch of smart people... and an attorney. The group
| spent dinner talking about a bunch of different random ideas, with no real
| goal or purpose -- just "chewing the rag" as one participant put it. But the
| next day the attorney approached them with a typewritten description of 36
| different inventions that were potentially patentable out of the dinner. When
| a random "chewing the rag" conversation turns up 36 monopolies, something is
| wrong. Those aren't inventions that deserve a monopoly.
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http://techdirt.com/articles/20080507/0114581051.shtml
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