Aussie inventor in $537m ($US388 million ) Microsoft damages win

[Swagman]

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Aussie inventor in $537m Microsoft damages win
Asher Moses
April 15, 2009 - 11:26AM

An Australian inventor is set to reap the lion's share of a $US388 million ($537 million) damages award from Microsoft after a US jury found the software giant stole his technology.

Ric Richardson, who divides his time between Sydney and California, is the founder of Uniloc, which sued Microsoft in 2003 for violating its patent relating to technology designed to deter software piracy.

The company alleged Microsoft earned billions of dollars by using the technology in its Windows XP and Office programs. Last week, a jury in Rhode Island found Microsoft violated the patent and told Microsoft to pay the company $US388 million, the fifth-largest patent jury award in US history, according to data compiled by Bloomberg



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/articles/2009/04/15/1239474914416.html

[jeff30997]

1. Microsoft stealing technology ?

Unbelievable! :rofl:

[groundloop]

2. I heard they've got Norm Coleman's lawyers lined up for the appeal process.

It'll be a good show. :popcorn:


(Of course the guy will be 150 years old before he sees a dime)

[lapfog_1]

3. How ironic... Microsoft stole the code they needed to prevent others from... stealing their code.

[Vidar]

4. Good news, bu Microsoft has lost 100 s of suits, only to buy out the

plaintiff sometime later.

[L0oniX]

5. It figures. Gates stole ideas and built Windows from Dos Shell and Deskview.

IBM dosshell was a mouse driven file manager GUI. Deskview was a dos program that allowed you to run 4 programs at the same time ...or multitasking. Gates was/is an idea pirate and a software pirate.

[pingme1X]

6. Xerox

Actually, Gates, Jobs and others "stole" the technology from Xerox. (Xerox let their developments walk out the back door and started the computer industry and businesses like, H-P, Apple, Microsoft, etc.)

From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_PARC


PARC (Palo Alto Research Center, Inc.), formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology.

Founded in 1970 as a division of Xerox Corporation, PARC has been responsible for such well known and important developments as laser printing, the Ethernet, the modern personal computer graphical user interface (GUI), ubiquitous computing,

[L0oniX]

7. Welcome to DU

[mainegreen]

8. Another reason to overhaul the patent system. Dumb patent.

Almost obvious in fact.

While MS does violate the patent, frankly in my heart I'm on Microsoft's side.

Patents are being used where copyright is better suited in the software world.

[cosmicone]

9. Everything is obvious after it has been invented

e.g. lightbulb. The idea of creating light from a heated filament was not new, however, Thomas Edison experimented and created the first working light bulb.

Patents are necessary to protect intellectual property and ideas that an inventor reduces to a working configuration.

[mainegreen]

10. True. But software patents almost always consist of patents of vague programming ideas.

And not of patents of implementation.

Using your lightbulb idea, this patent basically is a patent of the idea of a lightbulb, and not a method.

You should not be able to patent vague ideas.

Imagine if Stephen King filed for a patent, and got one, for 'A method to implement Scary Clowns in stories utilizing words.'

That's what this patent is.

That's what the majority of software patents are.

And yes, I am a programmer. Been one for 15 years.