Extortion racket, funded by Microsoft

Summary: After much bullying, which is always directed at Microsoft's rivals, Trend Micro agrees to pay Microsoft's Israeli patent troll, Finjan

RELYING on low-quality software patents, granted by the USPTO and sometimes purchased from IBM (because many of Finjan's own patents get rejected/invalidated in courts), the Microsoft-backed patent troll Finjan Holdings blackmails yet another Microsoft rival, this time Trend Micro.

"Remember that Finjan does not do anything but litigation, hence it’s a patent troll."As usual, this malicious troll issues a whitewashing statement about it (this is all they ever speak about to their so-called 'shareholders'). We have found this press release in a lot of sites. The troll pays a lot of money to spread this message, which it believes can compel many companies to shell out 'protection' money rather than attempt to challenge its software patents.

Finjan Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:FNJN), and its subsidiaries, Finjan, Inc. (“Finjan”), Finjan Mobile, Inc. (“Finjan Mobile”), and Finjan Blue, Inc. (“Finjan Blue”), a pioneer in cybersecurity technologies, and Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, today announced that they had entered into an on-going license arrangement.

Under this arrangement, both companies will benefit in a number of ways. Trend Micro gains access to Finjan’s broad cybersecurity patent portfolio, and Finjan will strengthen its leadership in embedded cybersecurity technologies and intellectual property through the transfer of select security-related patent assets from Trend Micro. Each party also gains more limited access to the other’s patent portfolio for a certain number of years.

Remember that Finjan does not do anything but litigation, hence it's a patent troll. How does Microsoft explain financially backing this troll?

Finjan isn't the only patent troll out there; but this one is large and connected to Microsoft, just like many others.

The EFF has just covered another example. The outcome of bogus patents and patent trolls that prey on the weak (without legal advisors) was explained as follows:

Foreign languages have been taught, and studied, for thousands of years. People who teach languages are the last folks that should be dealing with patent threat letters—but incredibly, that’s exactly what has happened to Mihalis Eleftheriou. Hodder and Stoughton, a large British publisher, has sent a letter to Eleftheriou claiming that it has rights to a patent that covers recorded language lessons, and demanding that he stop providing online courses.

Eleftheriou teaches a variety of online classes through his Language Transfer project. The courses are simple audio files uploaded to platforms like Soundcloud and YouTube. So you can imagine his surprise when he received a letter [PDF] from Hodder and Stoughton, saying that his project infringes a U.S. patent.

Patent trolls need to go away; they contribute absolutely nothing. For Microsoft to actively support many of them, including the world's biggest, says a lot about the 'new' Microsoft. ⬆