Microsoft patents Wish Lists
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Just what you always wanted Microsoft has been granted a patent for electronic Wish Lists. The patent, 7,315,834, was filed in April 2005 and granted on New Year's Day.â¦
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Microsoft on Friday said it has added Office binary formats to a list of technologies that are protected against patent-violation claims, answering criticism from some involved in the Office Open XML (OOXML) file-format standards process.
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Microsoft Corp.  is expanding its indemnification program for Windows and other software products in order to shield users from legal claims and patent disputes, the world's largest software maker said on Tuesday.
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SEATTLE -- Microsoft Corp. is expanding a program to give government organizations access to some of its tightly guarded software blueprints, amid growing competition from rivals who make such source code freely available.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft will expand its books search engine by including copyrighted works in its index for the first time starting Thursday evening. Microsoft has obtained permission for all the copyrighted books included in the Live Search Books service, said Danielle Tiedt, general manager of the Live Search selection team. By taking this approach, Microsoft wants to avoid locking horns over copyright issues with authors and publishers. Its rival, Google, faces two copyright-infringement lawsuits in the U.S. over itsÂ decision to scan copyrighted booksÂ without always obtaining permission from copyright owners. Tiedt acknowledges that Google's wholesale scanning of copyrighted works in library collections will give it a larger database of books. But she argues that by working with publishers and obtaining their permission, Microsoft will be able to offer a better experience to users. At launch tonight, Microsoft's service will feature "tens of thousands" of copyrighted books in its index, from publishers including McGraw-Hill Companies, Simon & Schuster, and Yale University Press, Tiedt said. She declined to be more specific about the number of titles Microsoft has been permitted to scan. Publishers decide what percentage of a copyrighted book Microsoft can show to users. If user decides to buy a book, Microsoft will offer links to external sites selling it, such as online retailers like Amazon.com or publisher Web stores. In the results list, Microsoft will also show users how frequently their search terms appear in each book so that they can get a sense of how relevant each work is to their search topic. Microsoft will also show information about the books, such as length, publisher, author, publishing date, table of contents and summaries. Microsoft launched Live Search Books in December of last year, offering only books in the public domain. In addition to including copyrighted books, Microsoft will also unveil enhancements to the service's user interface tonight. Google launched its Book Search service in 2004 and initially sought permission from copyright owners before scanning their books. It later modified its approach, scanning copyrighted books without permission as well. Google argues that it is protected by the fair use principle because it only displays short text snippets from copyrighted books it scanned without permission. Critics say the very act of scanning and storing a digital copy of a book without permission constitutes infringement. Google also scans public-domain works. Â
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InfoWorld - Flying bikes, cell phone robots, smart walking sticks, and audio speakers that defy logic are inventions all on display Tuesday at Microsoft&#39;s Redmond, Washington, headquarters.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft will expand its books search engine by including copyrighted works in its index for the first time starting Thursday evening.
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(InfoWorld) - Computer peripheral maker Belkin said Friday it has settled a patent infringement complaintÂ brought against it by software giant Microsoft. "We are glad to have reached a settlement and we are satisfied with the outcome," said Belkin spokeswoman Melody Chalaban, who declined to provide details of the settlement terms. On Aug. 1,Â Microsoft filed a patent-infringement complaintÂ with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) that said Belkin was importing products that infringed on a Microsoft patent for peripheral device technology. According to Microsoft, Belkin uses a technology called "U2" in several of its mouse products. Microsoft's patented U2 technology enables a peripheral to automatically sense whether the device is being plugged into a PS2 or USB (Universal Serial Bus) port on a computer and then make the connection. Microsoft filed the complaint after failing to reach agreement in licensing discussions with Belkin over more than two years, said Tom Burt, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel for Microsoft, in an e-mail statement when the ITC complaint was filed. Microsoft said it filed the complaint with the ITC rather than in a U.S. court because it wanted to prevent Belkin from bringing infringing products into the U.S. in the first place. Although Belkin is a U.S. company, the products in question are manufactured outside the country, Microsoft said.
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A new list of the top machines is  about to be released and SGI, IBM and others are jostling for bragging rights.
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The acquisition by Microsoft and Time Warner of a company with a significant portfolio of patents covering digital rights management technologies generates scrutiny by European antitrust regulators. The main focus of the investigation: Microsoft. By Wendy M. Grossman.
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Microsoft has some serious questions to answer....
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By Julio Ojeda-Zapata, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.  Sep. 19--Jim Hall of St. Paul had a simple idea: Create a free equivalent of MS-DOS, Microsoft's original computer operating system, that anyone could use or modify, for any purpose, with no risk of getting sued by Bill Gates and Co.
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Grotius writes &quot;As reported in CNET, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (the court that hears patent appeals) heard oral argument in an appeal from a $565 million award against Microsoft for infringing patent rights held by the
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By JESSICA MINTZ REDMOND, Wash. - Sticky notes. White boards. Videogame consoles. For a Microsoft Corp. event designed to show off cutting-edge software inventions, there are a lot of familiar tools on display.
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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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By Saul Hansell  Microsoft has been ordered by a U.S. jury to pay $1.52 billion in a patent dispute over the MP3 digital file format, the technology at the heart of the digital music boom.  If upheld on appeal, it would be the largest patent judgment on record.
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Bloomberg News broke the news yesterday that Microsoft will be allowed to argue that patents held by research firm Eolas Technologies regarding the ability to embed functionality in a Web browser page are invalid, when a retrial of Eolas' long-running patent suit begins on July 9.