--Marshall Phelps, Microsoft
Companies also can use their patent portfolios to disrupt competitors and gain revenue from companies that want to use their patented technologies. Microsoft, for example, has made claims that it holds patents for technologies in Linux, which open-source proponents viewed as a tactic to discourage people from using open-source software.
Joe Mullin is back to let us know about the latest patent insanity, starting with a post about a whole bunch of patent infringement lawsuits based on patents held by Scott Harris. You may recall Harris because he was a lawyer for a big law firm, but was quietly filing patents on the side, and then apparently working out deals whereby other companies licensed those patents to be used in infringement lawsuits against big companies -- including companies represented by the very same firm Harris worked for.
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ow, my critics will be the first to point out that I'm no patent attorney, but reading over the patent, it certainly appears to be a patent on displaying a book online. How is that possibly patentable material?
This is yet another reason why the lock down of knowledge by intellectual monopolies is simply unacceptable in a world that will be predicated on sharing digital stuff, just as we used to share the physical stuff that Nature gave us a few hundred thousand years ago.
The author of a proposed Chilean law to fight copyright infringement was greeted with the warning message "This copy of Microsoft Office is not genuine" when he was making a presentation about it.
Siemens reckoned Seagate had infringed a group of patents it thought it owned concerned with multi-layer hard disk drive sensor technology in GMR (Giant Magneto-Resistive) read heads. Siemens claimed up to $1bn in damages, based on all Seagate hard drives shipping since 2000 using its patented technology. Subsequently this was reduced to $366m, which it calculated as a three per cent royalty on Seagate HDD sales of $12.2bn in the relevant period. The judge then restricted the damages claim to royalties on disk drive sales after November 24 2004, which amounted to $160m.