Gaming the system
MS therefore break the patent because they pay nothing to Paltalk for use of the technology with their Xbox Live service, which stretches right across the world. And a quick word of warning to anyone in the UK, since Paltalk have one registered there too. It seems like Paltalk, who run an Instant Messaging service similar to that of Microsoft’s own MSN, are doing this to simply boost their reputation. Live has been up for four years in November. Could they not have pointed it out to Microsoft at the time, before it got huge? Or did they simply “forget” that they had filed the patent until now?
...[D]espite plenty of hand-wringing and tons upon tons of evidence of harm done by the current patent system, nothing is going to change any time soon.
Eric Goldman has an amusing patent lawsuit filed against Google for alleged violations of two patents by Google Reader. The two patents (one and two) have to do with information "coordination and retrieval" with one of them dating back to the late 80s.
[...]
Specifically, the filing suggests that the inventor really, really doesn't want to file a patent infringement lawsuit, and is really hoping that Google doesn't think it's litigious or get upset about it. Instead, the inventor claims that legal precedence forced him to file the lawsuit rather than negotiate.
--Linus Torvalds
Comments
mpz
2008-12-16 11:42:04
After all, all they have to do is pass the costs onto consumers anyway - lets face it, they've been paying enough all these years already.
And what price do you think they put on killing their only potentially viable competitor, or ensuring none can arise? Quite a lot I would imagine. A few nuisance lawsuits are quite a small price to pay.
Roy Schestowitz
2008-12-16 14:09:41
--Robert X. Cringely