Bonum Certa Men Certa

Patents Roundup: Microsoft's Intellectual 'Welfare', Litigation Rising, Abuse Beyond USPTO

Microsoft and Intellectual Monopolies



Some readers might still remember how Microsoft extorted a company, urging it to pay for intellectual monopolies. There were even threats of an embargo, which showed that Microsoft is a patent aggressor. Well, that's resolved now, probably meaning that Microsoft will be paid for products it has nothing to do with. They essentially use patents as a welfare programme.

Microsoft and Primax Electronics Ltd. of Taiwan say they've reached a licensing deal over the Redmond company's patented mouse technologies, resolving a complaint that Microsoft filed this summer with the U.S. International Trade Commission.

[...]

Separately, Microsoft yesterday settled a series of longstanding patent disputes with Alcatel-Lucent.


The Alcatel-Lucent tiff with Microsoft has gone on for quite some time [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and they seem to have just reached a secret settlement.

Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker, and Alcatel-Lucent settled most of their patent litigation, officials of the two companies said Tuesday.

Financial terms were not disclosed. The agreement covers six lawsuits, including one that resulted in the largest patent verdict in U.S. history before it was thrown out by a judge. Microsoft will continue its appeal of a $368 million verdict it lost that swelled to $511.6 million in June, the companies said.

The companies have been fighting since 2002 when Lucent, then a standalone concern, began demanding royalties from Microsoft customers Gateway and Dell over features in the Microsoft Windows operating system. A federal jury in San Diego in one case awarded Alcatel $1.52 billion - the largest patent verdict ever - over digital music technology.


Patent Mess Getting Worse



TechDirt let its readers know that Stanford had created a valuable source that's a database of patent litigation.

Over at Stanford, some law professors have been putting together a database of IP litigation from the past few years, called the Stanford IP Litigation Clearinghouse. The Law.com article claims that there are "surprising" facts already coming out of the database, but they don't seem to be any different than what's been known for a while (specifically, that the number of patent lawsuits has been relatively constant over the past few years).


Here is the article that looks at some numbers.

It's not true that patent infringement suits are going through the roof -- filings have held steady for eight years -- but there are a whole lot more defendants out there looking for lawyers.

While many IP litigators have been busier in the past few years, the actual number of infringement suits has hovered between 2,300 and 2,800 a year. But in 2007, the number of defendants named in these cases jumped from around 6,000 in 2006 to 9,000 (see PDF chart; registration required).

That's just one of the facts revealed by Stanford Law School's Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse, a searchable online database unveiled Monday evening that tracks all patent cases since 2000. Offering hard statistics on trends, from how many suits have been filed to how plaintiffs fare in front of a particular judge, the clearinghouse is being greeted enthusiastically by lawyers.


So, all in all, it's getting worse. Lawsuits are not a sign of success but a sign of unnecessary friction and distraction. Another new lawsuit has just hit eBay, which is part of the coalition to end software patents. [via Digital Majority]

Netcraft sued eBay and PayPal for infringement of its patents that cover an "internet billing method." During claim construction, the Western District of Wisconsin found that the limitation of "providing a communications link through equipment of the third party" requires that an infringer "provid[e] customers with internet access." Of course, eBay and PayPal do not provide internet access.


Here is a redundant lawsuit being dropped:

In July this year Hasbro set the legal dogs on Scrabulous, the popular Facebook-based Scrabble knock-off, saying it infringed on the intellectual property rights of the board game.

[...]

Scrabulous was later removed from Facebook, following a DMCA take-down order from Hasbro.


Europe



Software patents protest against EPO



Trademark laws can be abused too. We mentioned this one example the other day and it turns out that the EU won't quite permit this. In fact, the push to end the pro-software patents lobbies in Europe persists as well, so intellectual monopolies as a whole are being challenged.

What will it be in the United Kingdom after Nokia/Symbian did its damage?

Following a recent legal appeal by mobile phone OS vendor (and now Nokia subsidiary), Symbian, the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has just issued a practice note relating to software patentability that, according to patent attorneys, still does not bring the UK fully in line with Europe, in spite of a recent court case that suggested the IPO should change its previous practice.


We always have Nokia to blame, but had it not been Symbian, maybe it would be something or someone else.

What Lies Ahead



We wrote about "Linux Defenders" before, mostly to remark that it's challenging players in the system rather than the system itself [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

Here is some more coverage that we didn't see before:



We ought to have the interview with OIN real soon now.

The monopolists and their cronies are devising a mechanism even worse than patents and copyrights to marginalise the masses and empower the MAFIAA monopolies. It's an appalling case of people elected by the people (politicians) secretly meeting other rich people behind closed door to conspire against the very same people who voted for them. The ACTA is a crime against society, which is why it's kept so low-profile [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16]. It will remain under the wraps until it's impossible to protest against it or reverse this crime.

“DRM is nearly always the result of a conspiracy of companies to restrict the technology available to the public. Such conspiracy should be a crime, and the executives responsible for it should be sentenced to prison.”

--Richard Stallman



Fortunately, people are beginning to voice some concerns and express skepticism about the ACTA over at the Internet Governance Forum.

The third annual United Nations-led Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad, India this month addressed a range of topics related to intellectual property rights and the free flow of information, and provided a venue for doubts about a closed-door international anti-counterfeiting treaty negotiation being led by the United States and Japan.

The proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) intended to align governments in their fights against illicit trade, might have the effect of stopping more positive developments in intellectual property law that emerged over the last year, warned Eddan Katz, international affairs director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Developments related to IP were presented in several workshops by the dynamic coalitions on access to knowledge and open standards. Once again IP issues did not make it to the main sessions of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), and IP was not mentioned more than three or four times in the main sessions rather ephemerally, with the exception of ACTA.

Brazilian diplomat Everton Lucero in a main session warned against ACTA as a negative example of the contrary to what is seen as the major success model of the IGF: multi-stakeholder cooperation between governments, industry and civil society and also the so-called “enhanced cooperation.” “In fact [ACTA] is the worst example,” Lucero told Intellectual Property Watch.


Tell people about the ACTA. The media does not cover this because it's controlled by the very same media companies that are committing this crime against the people.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Confirmed in French Media: Mass Layoffs (10% Culled) in Microsoft France
Now some reports in French
Microsoft in Freefall in Finland
Can Finland eradicate Windows from all its infrastructure, including core operations that are sensitive to sabotage by cracking?
Google's Chrome Passes 70% and Web Standards Are Dying
The Web is quickly becoming devoid of any standards
Slopwatch: Plagiarism and Ponzi Scheme, Bubble About to Burst Entirely, Admits Goldman Sachs
the hype that Google News and The Register MS actively participate and profit from
The Register MS Says "AI Web Crawlers Are Destroying Websites", So Why Does The Register MS Help 'AI' Companies? (Spoiler: Money)
People need to call out The Register MS on its hypocrisy
Slopfarms Already Peaked, They Will Die When Slop Companies Run Out of Money to Borrow
slopfarms will lack an actual "engine"
Why We Publish Information About the SLAPPs (But Not About the Legal Process), an Abuse of Process by Americans Trying to Silence Critics of Their Employer, Microsoft
It doesn't take thousands of pages to explain something simple
 
Links 02/09/2025: Oligarch Tech and Text Encoding Concerns in Ada
Links for the day
"Internal Changes at Red Hat / IBM"
It seems like quite a few people are leaving
"People on LinkedIn Saying That They've Left Red Hat."
We already saw signs of it a month ago and named some of the people
Gone With the BRICs (or BRICS): "Linux 8" in Cuba
GAFAM must be worried
Telecompaper Reports Microsoft to Reduce the Workforce by Another 10% (in France)
Imagine what this will do to staff's morale
India is Back to Windows 8 (Market Share Down to 8%) as Android Soars to a New Record High
For Microsoft, India is a runaway market
Links 02/09/2025: SCO Summit and Russia Suspected Of Jamming GPS
Links for the day
Gemini Links 02/09/2025: Mediterranean Marriage and Staying Connected at 35,000 Feet
Links for the day
Links 02/09/2025: Attacks on Unions, Microsoft TCO, and DDoSing a Growing Problem
Links for the day
Internet Relay Chat Didn't Fall Off a Cliff
IRC will turn 40 in less than 3 years from now
The UEFI 9/11 - Part V - This is Not a Drill (Disable "SecureBoot" Now)
A "9/11" Coming
There's No Obligation to Speak to Anybody
The very fact that "bkuhn" is till spending time in social control media says a lot about his poor judgment
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 01, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 01, 2025
Microsoft Trying to Force People to Resign (Amid Mass Layoffs) a Strategy That Takes Its Toll
Microsoft seems to be circling down the drain and the "final flush" will be the moment the "hey hi" (AI) bubble implodes completely
Google Simply Cannot Be Trusted
Only fools would trust GAFAM
Admission That a Third Party (or Parties) Funds the SLAPPs Against Techrights
This can end up costing them over a million dollars
Modifying and Writing One's Own Computer Programs is Not a Crime (or: Google Proves That Stallman Was Right)
We're generally gratified to see so many positive mentions of him
Why We Stopped Publishing Videos (for Now)
We'll probably get back to videos one day, but it's hard to say when or to what extent
What Animal Rights Activism Teaches Us About Sympathy and Focus
It's possible to believe that the planet is warming, that we must do something about it, and still eat eggs and butter
When You Turn Web Sites About Tech Into Political Sites
A lot of people fall into the trap of catering only for particular groups
Gemini Links 02/09/2025: ROOPHLOCH 2025 and Lagrange 1.19 Released
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/09/2025: News Corp. WSJ and A Month With NixOS
Links for the day
“Sideloading” Never Killed Anybody
There are many online discussions this week about the misnomer "sideloading"
Slopwatch: Google News as FUD Vector Against Linux and Plagiarism Enhancer, Serial Slopper (SS) Uses LLMs to Googlebomb "Linux"
Slop destroys the Web not just by screwing with search engines and helping plagiarists. It's also responsible for de facto DDoS attacks...
Links 01/09/2025: "Attacks on Science" and China's "Soft Power" Grows
Links for the day
Links 01/09/2025: Fresh Backlash Against Slop and "Norway’s Electricity Crisis is About to Hit Britain"
Links for the day
Writing and Coding Isn't Always Enough
Last year we had to assume a role we didn't have before: litigants
Links 01/09/2025: Catching Up (Mostly via Deutsche Welle), "Windows TCO" Effect in UK
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/09/2025: Linguistic Barriers and "Web 1.0 Hosting"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 31, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, August 31, 2025
Autumn Has Come
Autumn should be exciting in all sorts of ways; it'll also mark our anniversary
The UEFI 9/11 - Part IV - External Interference
They all seem to be playing a role in crushing Software Freedom and self-determination for users
Links 31/08/2025: Baggage Claim Scams, an Insurrectionist’s War on Culture, and a Sudden Robotics Hype
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/08/2025: Reviewing Netsurf and Slightly Less Historic Ada Design
Links for the day
IBM Has Taken Control of GNOME
Don't expect a successor to be found any time soon
Links 31/08/2025: Google Gmail Data Breach and LF Puff Pieces for Pay
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 30, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, August 30, 2025
This is What Google News Has Become
Moments ago