10.20.11
Posted in Antitrust, Bill Gates, Courtroom, Microsoft, Novell at 1:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
It’s all about Noorda’s Novell, not Ballmer’s and Hovsepian’s ‘new’ Novell
Ray Noorda, who died three weeks before Novell became partly Microsoft controlled
Summary: Clarifications about the Novell vs. Microsoft case and what it’s really all about (or who it really involves)
A FEW days ago we wrote about antitrust cases and about Novell's case against Microsoft in particular. It is not about today’s Novell, but about Noorda’s Novell. Noorda died almost exactly 5 years ago, leaving a legacy that teaches what a corrupt company Microsoft really is (we have some court exhibits in our wiki). It’s about a different Novell that existed long ago and was run under completely different reign/leadership. The Novell of the past 5 years was run jointly by Microsoft and now by Attachmate, which is a top partner of Microsoft (apropos, watch some Novell-related videos from Attachmate’s BrainShare [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and some about Groupwise, such as this new one).
SUSE has been decoupled from Novell and it is doing its own rituals, pretending that SUSE itself is not in Microsoft’s pockets (even though it is, especially since July) and it’s no wonder that there are delays. The project has been suffering delays for quite some time and even frequency of releases got lowered a couple of years ago. It is not looking too good. OpenSUSE only matters for marketing purposes. It makes Microsoft's GNU/Linux distribution be portrayed as "open" and "community-driven". But moving on a bit, it seems as though Mr. Gates will have to leave his PR/lobbying/investment operations for a day or two to explain/justify his crime to the courts. As Pogson puts it: “Remembering the past should help us avoid a repetition. We shall see whether or not the message was learned. It seems the old “partners” of M$ are continuing to go along. It will take the new power houses of Google and Android/Linux to finish the battle between good and evil in IT.” He also wrote about “harassing customers” of Android, which is something we addressed the other day.
A lot of the coverage of the case against Microsoft comes from Pamela Jones, who is very familiar with this case. So aside from the continued focus on the Oracle vs. Google case and analysis of patent trolls from Professor Webbink (who already highlighted the connection to Intellectual Ventures, Microsoft’s patent troll), Groklaw covers the Novell case in two parts (so far). Pogson remarks on Gates’ role while Jones writes:
Today was the first day of the trial in Novell v. Microsoft, the antitrust trial over WordPerfect and Quattro Pro. Novell won the right to this trial on appeal. The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed Judge J. Frederick Motz’s ruling [PDF] on summary judgment in favor of Microsoft, basically on a technicality, and so it’s back to Utah they had to go, but with Judge Motz, who is a judge in US District Court in Maryland, where the case had been transferred from Utah, commuting to Utah to stay in charge of the case.
The case matters, because normally Microsoft settles antitrust litigation either before they go to trial or early in the trial, and frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened again.
Our own Chris Brown attended for us today. He says that mainly today was about picking the jury. They sat 12 jurors, out of 45 prospective jurors, just in case. In Utah, where this trial is happening, the judge explained, you only need 6 jurors for civil trials, but things happen, and rather than run out of jurors, they picked double the amount, and he says the judge said all of them would participate if they all make it to the end of the trial. They were then released until the morning, 8:30 AM promptly, and the lawyers then argued about whether the Findings of Fact from the US government’s antitrust trial against Microsoft should be called Findings of Fact or just Findings.
This trial will be interesting to watch, but it is not related to the same Novell we were boycotting, the Novell which was a Microsoft ally rather than a foe. The ‘old Novell’ died just weeks after Noorda had died. The ‘new’ Novell needs to die because it is actively helping Microsoft promote Linux tax, promote .NET, promote OOXML, and so on. It ought to be noted that Novell's role in the SCO case also predates Ballmer’s and Hovsepian’s leadership at Novell. █
“Now [Novell is] little better than a branch of Microsoft”
–LinuxToday Managing Editor
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10.18.11
Posted in Antitrust, Bill Gates, Courtroom, Microsoft, Novell at 4:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Novell’s lawyers still pursue justice in the case against Microsoft, which used illegal tactics to derail Novell and prevent people from using anything but Microsoft
MICROSOFT’S history with Novell is a subject that we mostly covered in 2006 and in 2007. We used antitrust exhibits to support our allegations with evidence that had not been publicly viewed before and some of it got organised in our wiki. This post is not about to repeat what we already covered as it would be rather wasteful. Instead we shall look at the latest news.
“Novell is a shadow of its former self,” explains this item of news which looks back at the 1995 era and says:
Who were the big companies back in the 1995 era Internet? Sun, Cisco and Novell come to mind. Sun is now part of Oracle, Novell is a shadow of its former self, and Cisco has acquired 75 companies since then, or so it seems.
“Novell takes Microsoft to court in dispute over Windows 95,” says a British news site about the latest from the Novell-Microsoft antitrust case:
Novell is to begin antitrust proceedings against Microsoft today in the hope of finally settling a long-running dispute involving Windows 95, with Microsoft founder Bill Gates expected to make an appearance as a witness.
Novell alleges that Microsoft deliberately delayed releasing Windows 95 in order to harm Novell’s WordPerfect application software business in the mid-1990s and to crush competition in the office applications market.
The press in the United States covered this too:
Long-running Novell, Microsoft antitrust case going to trial in federal court
Two high-tech heavyweights will go to battle in federal court Monday in an attempt to settle a long-running dispute, and Bill Gates could make an appearance as a witness.
Novell Inc. sued Microsoft Corp., accusing the computer giant of violating U.S. antitrust laws, primarily through its arrangements with other computer makers. Since the suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City in 2004, a judge has dismissed five of Novell’s six original claims.
Bill Gates may now be spending well over a million dollars per day on just PR (not donations but buying positive coverage alone); however his past crimes are known to many. His present greed is a subject we’ll return to covering quite soon. This greed helps feed some patent trolls and lobbyists, not just harmful companies that raid society. █
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09.02.11
Posted in Apple, Courtroom, FUD, GNU/Linux, Google, GPL, Microsoft, Patents at 6:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Apple is said to have committed a serious felony by pretending to be police and it is also attacking Linux through the courtroom, much to the chagrin of Microsoft proponents and lobbyists
THE cult which is Apple “will die with steve jobs,” wrote to me someone in Identi.ca two hours ago, after I had posted a link about Apple losing its leadership to Linux (more on that in our daily Links).
The latest disgrace from Apple is this allegation that Apple has again misused police powers that it does not have. To quote:
If accurate, his account raises the possibility that Apple security personnel attempting to recover the prototype falsely represented themselves as police officers — a criminal act punishable by up to a year in jail in the state of California — or that SFPD employees colluding with Apple failed to properly report an extensive search of a person’s home, car, and computer.
A “criminal act”? Don’t worry, cults do that a lot. Ask Scientologists. As TechDirt put it in its headline, “Man Claims Apple Investigators Pretended To Be SF Police In Searching For Lost iPhone Prototype”. Criminal if true, but Apple is never punished for such behaviour, just like it got away with it the previous time (the police typically protects rich corporations from the people, not vice versa). Quoting TechDirt:
Earlier this week, News.com broke a story of yet another Apple employee losing an iPhone prototype in a bar (stop me if you’ve heard this one before…). Unlike the last one, this one (as far as we know) did not get sold to some tech website for a few thousand dollars. However, reports are emerging that raise some serious questions about how Apple went about trying to retrieve the phone.
A man in San Francisco, Sergio Calderon, claims that six people showed up at his door claiming to be San Francisco Police Department officers, and that they had badges. They claimed they were looking for a lost phone, but didn’t say it was a prototype. The original News.com report had said that police together with Apple investigators went to the guy’s house — but the SFPD says they have no record of SFPD being involved in any such action (which it should have if they were involved). The guy whose house was searched says that no one identified themselves as being from Apple. They also threatened him and his family over their immigration status (even though he says they’re all legal). Either way, he was nervous and let them search his house (a mistake) and even check out his computer. They didn’t find anything.
What we cannot help but notice is that many of the pro-Microsoft people have become Apple boosters when it comes to the war on Android. They just cannot stand Linux and Free software, so Apple and Microsoft share common goals. Microsoft’s shameless booster Matt Rosoff continues to promote anti-Linux sides (Rosoff came from a Microsoft consultancy) and the egomaniac pro-Microsoft lobbyist we have all come to know and loathe also quotes Microsoft boosters like Ed Bott in order to make Android/Google/Linux look bad. That one example was just a few hours ago. He does this all day long. They work in unison to daemonise Android and prop up Apple’s case, which by the way has been noticed also by Neil Richards, who writes the column “I Can Sue You, But You Can’t Sue Us: Apple”. To quote:
Apple has sued almost every other company in the mobile industry, in not only US but around the globe. The company also tried to patent a rectangular design claiming monopoly in the tablet segment.
The same company whose ex-CEO quotes “We are shameless about stealing from others.” has sued everyone else over minor similarities in the box of the product, icon design and rectangular shape.
[...]
This is not the first time anti-FOSS bloggers are trying to spin the story. They recently twisted the story of Samsung’s victory in the Dutch court as the victory of Apple diluting the fact that Apple lost its design patents and all other software patents except for one. The court gave Samsung 7 weeks and one day’s time to fix the problem or the injunction will be enforced. Trusted sources like BBC also fell for this trick and covered the defeat of Samsung.
It is interesting to see that such blogger, with no legal expertise, are supporting Apple’s foul cry that Samsung and Motorola are abusing their patents. What they won’t tell us is its Apple which is suing everyone else using software patents.
It’s interesting to see that the same anti-Android lobbyists while support Apple’s ‘right’ to use a broad rectangular design and block everyone else from selling a device, but they criticize competitors when they try to defend themselves using the technologies they actually invented!
We mentioned this yesterday and also this morning. Apple has no shame left. And on the same subject, for those bolstering the anti-Android camp there’s the Oracle case on which Groklaw remarks: “Google’s response is a thorough recitation of the current law of copyright when it comes to analyzing software on the issue of copyright infringement, at least within the 9th Circuit. Google’s strongest arguments are that the JAVA API’s at issue are functional and, thus, not protected by copyright and, to the extent Google has copied anything, the copying has been de minimis, i.e., a few lines of code out of thousands.”
What’s very popular right now among anti-Android lobbyists is to claim copyright-related problems in Android that almost nobody cares about (not even the developers). They try to cause friction and infighting. Some of these people have employment history in Microsoft. We know those tactics. █
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08.20.11
Posted in Apple, Courtroom, GNU/Linux, Google at 9:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Jobs image licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (version 1.2 or any later versions); Ellison patch By Thomas Hawk
Summary: Steve Jobs’ mob is systematically manipulating images that his lawyers submit as ‘evidence’ with which to ban Linux-based devices
LAST YEAR a Microsoft Lawyer said that Microsoft “covers up alleged misconduct, mischaracterizes evidence [...] protects the perpetrators and retaliates against victims.” A few days ago we saw that Apple too is perturbing the legal system with potential illegalities like Microsoft's. According to another report from Holland/USA [via], “In a court filing, Apple resized a photo of the Galaxy S smartphone to match the dimensions of an iPhone 3G” (not just its hypePad).
Microsoft got fined $40,000,000 for trial misconduct. Will Apple be filed for submitting evidence which it knew was fake? How about banning Apple rather than devices Apple wants banned, using fake evidence as an instrument that deceives/manipulates judges?
Apple: where gullibility is the business model. █
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08.18.11
Posted in Courtroom, Patents at 6:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
TechDirt’s Mike Masnick
Summary: Why the courtroom is tossing more software patents out and why the US political and patent systems are unlikely to just altogether forbid software patenting any time soon
EARLIER today, our reader Jose told us about this new analysis from Mike Masnick, who interprets the news we wrote about last night as meaning that software patents are weakened in the US system of courts. Quoting part of the blog post:
Well, this is getting interesting. Last year, when the Supreme Court ruled very narrowly in the Bilski case, without making any explicit statement (as precedent) on overall software or business model patents, many people were frustrated. Here was a situation where the Supreme Court could have drawn a much clearer map, but it declined to do so. Of course, we wondered if this would just mean that another case would have to make its way to the Supreme Court to get a clearer ruling on software patents. In effect, with Bilski, the Supreme Court basically said “this one test you use is fine, but it’s not the only test.” It didn’t say what those other tests should be, but basically left it up to the courts to decide. However, it did reject the specific Bilski patent for being an “abstract” idea, saying that this was not patentable under Section 101 of the Patent Act.
What’s been interesting is that this seems to have emboldened a few judges to apply new or different tests (with clear reasons and caselaw for why they do so)… and some of this is leading to more software patents getting rejected. In a new ruling at the Federal Circuit appeals court (CAFC), the court appears to open up a potentially broad path for rejecting all sorts of bad (mostly software) patents by deciding that the Supreme Court’s Bilski ruling might not have been so narrow after all.
We might be approaching the elimination of software patents. it is one thing for software patents to be approved by the USPTO (which makes money from it) but entirely another for those patents to withstand scrutiny from the defendant and the judge/jury. Of course it might take a while for silly SCOTUS to do what’s right for the population and not what’s good for very large corporations, but politicians too — not just the legal system — can make an impact. The problem is that the term “reform” got hijacked to mean the wrong reform that mostly benefits very large corporations, not the population. As one new article puts it:
According to Bernard Codd, an intellectual property partner with McDermott Will & Emery, the proposed “first to file” provision “would be a fundamental change to patent law.” The U.S. is among the only developed countries that clings to the “first to invent” system, he explained, which tends to inspire litigation over who actually invented a particular product or system. Under a first to file system, the first party to file is the presumed inventor, which creates what some refer to as a race to file.
Not everyone is happy about this likely change, with opponents claiming it unfairly favors large companies that can more easily afford the relatively expensive and complex process of filing patent applications. However, Codd thinks this characterization of the first to file system isn’t entirely accurate. Ultimately, he said, it means “you can’t afford to sit on ideas anymore,” regardless who you are, because if the guy across the street files first, you get nothing.
It might actually end up leveling the playing field for small businesses, according to him. Large companies often go through elongated processes when filing patent applications, Codd explained, and they’ll have to adapt to the new system. He added that there’s a tactic called the provisional patent application that should become a lot more popular. Codd thinks provisional applications will be a godsend for small inventors because they can draft and file a provisional application in a day and then have a year to undertake the laborious patent-application process.
Of course, this assessment comes from an “intellectual property” people, who is biased by the nature of his financial interests. They’re hijacking this debate, too. A few days ago we were approached by an analyst/researcher for a survey about Acacia (for its valuation). It turned out that he had only surveyed “intellectual property” people, who told him how wonderful and valuable Acacia was. As long as the legal system and political system are both run by people from law schools, we’re all deep in trouble. █
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06.10.11
Posted in America, Courtroom, Law, Microsoft, Open XML, Patents at 7:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), comprising no scientists, rules in favour of software patents and thus endorses a $290 million fine, affecting OOXML
AS PROMISED, this is a standalone post about the i4i ruling at the SCOTUS.
So the news is just about everywhere, especially in the Canadian press (because i4i is a Canadian company). The SCOTUS ruled against Microsoft as we mentioned earlier. King of the trolls, Microsoft, suffers from a verdict which is good news for patent trolls. The i4i case is not about patent trolls (in fact, i4i does have products), but the consequence of it is that rogue patents get legitimacy from the incompetent and at times technically-illiterate SCOTUS (they went to law school many decades ago). The SCOTUS is against fundamental principles that legalese experts rarely grasp and it neglects the people’s interests, too, not just technologists’. It helps monopolists under the assumption that their disinformation campaigns actually bear truths.
About Microsoft losing the case, Rui Seabra says that “being a patent aggressor themselves, they kind of deserve it, however… SCOTUS validating #swpat is definitely not good.” As pointed out by the other side of this debate (patent lawyer Mike Wokasch):
Prediction: Breyer’s concurrence, (w/ Alito & Scalia) re:role of courts, becomes important fodder for the anti-#swpat crowd. #patents #i4i
A FOSS respective on this case can be found in Groklaw, which calls it a “Disappointing Supreme Court decision”. This was covered by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols and Joe Brockmeier too. They explain the relevance to FOSS.
Here is the official decision [PDF] and other news coverage below. The success of Free software is hinged upon eradication of software patents because they impede dissemination. █
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06.07.11
Posted in Antitrust, Courtroom, Mail, Microsoft, Novell, Office Suites at 3:17 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Customers continue to replace GroupWise and Techrights wonders what Attachmate will do about the WordPerfect case
Attachmate, a Microsoft partner, has bought Novell while leaving Mono out in the cold and letting Microsoft take the patents. The thing is, Attachmate has hardly said anything about GroupWise. A tricky situation for sure as the product keeps bleeding. EAT is the latest large user to dump it. From the news: “The chain rolled out the cloud-based Apps productivity suite seven months ago to help meet its goal of doubling the size of its business. It replaced a 10-year-old Novell GroupWise system.”
There is more about it here and here:
The migration involved a move away from Novell Groupwise.
Cesar Ramanauskas, systems engineer at EAT, says in a blog post, “In preparation for our goal of doubling in size, EAT migrated to Google Apps for Business, after more than a decade of using Novell GroupWise.”
Inaction from Attachmate cannot help much, can it? But the elephants in the room are actually SUSE, the SCO case, and the Microsoft case. Will Attachmate dump the case against its partner, Microsoft? We are not sure what might happen with the antitrust case because Attachmate never mentions it and the Microsoft booster portrays it as just a “headache” when he argues:
But Microsoft’s antitrust problems aren’t ending just yet. Another old case involving WordPerfect, the once widely used word prcoessor, has been resurrected by a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling overturning a previous judgment in favor of Microsoft and allowing the case being pursued by Novell to proceed. Novell, now owned by Attachmate, owned WordPerfect for a couple of years in the mid-1990s before selling it to current owner Corel.
Some of us think that Microsoft toys around with Skype and Nvidia simply because of loose/lenient oversight. █
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05.12.11
Posted in Courtroom, GNU/Linux, Patents at 7:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Bedrock’s lawsuit against Yahoo! sinks like a rock. Here’s why.
NOT so long ago Yahoo joined the Linux Foundation, whose head has just said that “Software Patents invite Trolls,” based on Falk Metzler, who is a patent lawyer.
Well, on the same day we learn that “Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost”: [via]
There may be only one place in America where Yahoo is outperforming Google: the Tyler, Texas, courtroom of federal district court judge Leonard Davis, where a patent holding company called Bedrock accused both companies of infringing a Linux software patent.
On Tuesday Yahoo and its lawyers from McDermott Will & Emery won a jury verdict that Yahoo does not infringe Bedrock’s patent, which involves code for removing expired records while the operating system performs other operations. On April 15, a separate Tyler jury reached a contrary conclusion in Bedrock’s case against Google, finding that Google infringed the same patent and awarding Bedrock $5 million in damages.
To be fair, the Google verdict was hardly the windfall Bedrock and its lawyers at McKool Smith were hoping for. McKool lead trial counsel Douglas Cawley told jurors that Google had saved half a billion dollars as a result of its infringement of Bedrock’s patent. He asked for an award of $183 million and got only $5 million. But given the success Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan has had in East Texas litigation for Google, it’s worth taking a look at why Yahoo got a flat-out defense win and Google didn’t — especially because McKool put on the same three Bedrock witnesses (the patent inventor, a damages expert, and a technical expert) in both trials.
First off, Bedrock had a stronger case against Google. Cawley put on evidence that Google used Bedrock’s Linux code on its servers (although Google got rid of the code before trial). Yahoo, on the other hand, used a different form of Linux, and its lead trial lawyer, Yar Chaikovsky and Fay Morisseau of McDermott Will, were able to argue that Yahoo never executed the Bedrock code.
Yahoo also benefited mightily from going to trial second. Chaikovsky and local counsel Jennifer Doan of Haltom and Doan were in the teeming throng of defense lawyers who sat through the Google trial in April, along with lawyers for co-defendants Amazon, AOL, MySpace, and SoftLayer. They got to preview Bedrock’s case and watch how Cawley of McKool Smith handled Google’s experts and its corporate witness, software engineer Lucas Pereira. That undoubtedly helped Chaikovsky prepare his witnesses. (McDermott was also smart to call Yahoo co-founder David Filo as his corporate witness — East Texas juries love hearing from top-level execs.)
For related posts about Bedrock, consider the following:
Soon we will find out how mobbyists will try to spin this after exaggerating the risk and pushing journalists to play along (following the preliminary Google ruling, whose outcome was dubious and can be overruled). █
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