Eolas, Microsoft make their case--again
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com December 8, 2004, 11:09 AM PT. Microsoft and the University of California are getting ready to make their respective cases before the US Court of Appeals on Thursday in the biggest patent fight in Web history.
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Moving Cubes There may be multiple political/managerial reasons behind a decision to move from Hyperion's Essbase to Microsoft's Analysis Services â not least of which might be the recent purchase of Hyperion by Oracle.â¦
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Novell has spent years battling Microsoft. Maybe this time it will work.
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Microsoft  said on Monday it  would not appeal against its defeat in a landmark antitrust  case in a top European Union court last month.
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In the second day of a hearing before the European Court of First Instance, Microsoft will today argue that sanctions imposed on the software company following an antitrust ruling by the Commission should be suspended until an appeal of the antitrust
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Microsoft has decided not to appeal&#160;last month&#39;s appeal ruling&#160;against it from the Court of First Instance (CFI) and has finally&#160;agreed to comply&#160;with the European Commission&#39;s&#160;2004 antitrust ruling&#160;that sparked the company&#39;s appeal.
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Microsoft Corp. and Eolas Technologies Inc. have settled their long-running legal battle, according to a letter sent to Eolas shareholders.
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(InfoWorld) - The European Court of First Instance will give its long-awaited verdict in Microsoft's antitrust appeal on Sept. 17, people involved in the matter said Tuesday. It is by far the biggest antitrust case ever referred to the European Union's second highest court. The outcome of the appeal, which will have taken more than three years, will influence the future shape of the software industry and be a reference point for future antitrust cases, especially those in the fast-changing world of information technology. The European CommissionÂ ruled in 2004Â that Microsoft had abused the dominant position of its Windows OS to muscle in on other sectors of the software market. By bundling Windows Media Player, its audio and video playing software, into Windows, Microsoft competed unfairly against rivals such as Real Networks and Apple, the Commission ruled. And by failing to share technical information about how to interoperate with Windows PCs, Microsoft managed to steal a march in the market for low-end server operating systems. Microsoft appealedÂ both threads of that ruling, and in April last year the court held a three-day hearing at which the Commission and Microsoft, together with their respective software industry allies, tried to convince the judges of their arguments. There are four possible outcomes of September's decision, two of which are clear cut but unlikely, and the other two mixed and more probable. First clear-cut but unlikely outcome: the court sides with the Commission on both parts of the case -- media player and server interoperability. It deems Microsoft an obstacle to innovation in the software industry and orders the immediate break-up of the company, effectively appropriating the Windows operating system and making it a public utility. Second clear cut but unlikely outcome: the court sides with Microsoft on both counts. It declares that the break-neck speed of change in the IT industry is defined by a string of monopolies and that one monopoly is inevitably overtaken by another in time. Therefore, regulators should not apply antitrust laws too strictly, and should allow dominant operators such as Microsoft to use all means to prolong and expand their dominance of a market. More likely, the court will give a mixed ruling. It may side with the Commission on interoperability but uphold Microsoft's appeal of the bundling ruling. Microsoft is ordered to release all interoperability information to rivals immediately. The result would be growth of Microsoft's largest direct rivals, at its expense, and a flattening of the software market as we know it today, with Microsoft brought slightly more into line with the likes of Sun Microsystems, Oracle, and IBM. It would also open up Microsoft Office to open source software rivals, who until now have been marginalized in the lucrative desktop application market. However, Microsoft would no longer need to sell a second version of Windows with the Media Player stripped out, which it has been forced to do in Europe today, and it would most probably bundle more and more features with Windows in future, to the likely detriment of any halfway successful innovation from a software developer such as Google. In a nutshell, this outcome would restore fair competition in the software markets that existed in the 20th century but it would do nothing to impede Microsoft from muscling in on new markets that have already started to emerge this century. Alternatively, Microsoft could lose the bundling argument but win on the interoperability side. The Court orders Microsoft to set up a separate company to sell a completely unbundled version of Windows, a turbo-charged "edition N," if you like (the name for its version of Windows without Media Player). This separate entity would be free to compete with the fully bundled version, and free to strike partnerships with any other software developer. However, Microsoft could still withhold information about Windows from rivals to handicap them in some markets, such as the low-end server operating system market. This would allow Microsoft to dominate the traditional, office-based computing environment, at the expense of rivals such as Sun Microsystems, IBM, and Oracle. Put simply, this outcome would secure Microsoft in all the fat, but mature markets connected to the office environment, but would limit its ability to fend off challenges in new fields linked to the Internet. The third of these outcomes is the likeliest, according to lawyers following the case, although none would be quoted predicting the court's decision. Â
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Microsoft is in court today contesting a Federal Court ruling in favour of Eolas for $565 million. The court upheld a lower court ruling that Microsoft&#39;s popular Internet Exporer browser infringed on patents
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Eight-year IP battle still hot in 2007 Microsoft is getting another chance to prove to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that the disputed Eolas patent for browser plug-ins is invalid.â¦
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Despite reports saying that Microsoft and the W3C have Eolas Technologies on the ropes in their patent battle over basic browser technology, Eolas sounded an upbeat note Thursday.
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COMMENTARY: The European Union (UN)&#39;s European Commission (EC) has opened yet another probe into Microsoft&#39;s business practices.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft and EolasÂ have settled their long-running legal battle, according to a letter sent to Eolas shareholders. The letter, posted on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Web site, says that the companies settled on Aug. 24 but will not disclose terms of the settlement. On Sept. 4, Eolas plans a shareholder meeting and will discuss information from the settlement that it is allowed to disclose as well as future business plans for the company. The letter, signed by Eolas CEO Mark Swords, also says that the company plans to pay a dividend of between $60 and $72 per share to shareholders. A Microsoft spokesman could not immediately comment on the settlement and Eolas has not replied to a request for further comment. The suit, first filed by Eolas in 1999, charged Microsoft with infringing on Eolas patents in its Internet Explorer browser. The patent relates to embedding interactive content in Web sites. Eolas won an initial $500 million judgment butÂ appeals by Microsoft resulted in further investigation into the patent's validity. In late July,Â the companies said that they were working to settle the case.
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Legal wrangling over competing hard drive technologies continues.
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I can't urge you strongly enough to read the article entitled How Vista Lets Microsoft Lock Users In. It details how Microsoft has built into Vista the "trusted computing" ability to lock down Office files via DRM such that no unauthorized document reader will be able to decrypt and read them. This is perhaps one of the biggest hidden weapons Microsoft has in its arsenal that could sabotage Linux and OpenOffice.org if Microsoft succeeds in its attempt to plug SUSE and all Novell's "interoperability" bonuses.   Think of this, if you will, as the Tivoization of Office files, only with malicious intent.  Microsoft could, indeed, open up the document format completely and swear before God that it will never sue anyone for patent infringement.  However, this does not prevent Microsoft from locking Office files in such a way that only Vista users can read them.  No one else will be able to do so without the proper authorization, thus rendering the open format and Microsoft compatibility entirely meaningless.
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Just because Microsoft has said it will comply immediately with a European Court judge&#39;s order to follow specified antitrust remedies doesn&#39;t mean life will be a bowl of cherries for Microsoft&#39;s partners, developers and even its competitors.
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We'll fight them on the breaches... Interview If Microsoft is aiming for a courtroom collision with the world of free software, it may be disappointed.â¦