Company sues Microsoft over 'Forefront' name
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Microsoft Corp. may have thought it was being original when it decided to brand its security portfolio "Forefront" in July, but a Seattle software company begs to differ.
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Lawsuit alleges the software giant unlawfully attempted to eliminate competition from Novell&#39;s WordPerfect and Quattro Pro applications.
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The war of words between antivirus vendor Kaspersky Lab and rival Rising Tech, has intensified with a defamation lawsuit.
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Microsoft has filed its first lawsuits over allegedly counterfeit and illicit certificates of authenticity, the labels attached to software packages and computers to verify the legitimacy of the programs inside.
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(InfoWorld) - French television presenter Philippe Gildas has sued Microsoft for "violation of intellectual property," accusing the software publisher of illegally using the trademark "Vista." Gildas registered the name Microsoft chose for its latest operating system in October 2003 -- two years before Microsoft registered its trademark with the French National Institute for Intellectual Property (INPI). He had registered the trademark for a new television channel aimed at senior citizens, TÃ©lÃ© Vista, which was to have launched in 2003. The project was delayed, but is now coming to fruition, with plans to launch the channel later this year. Gildas sees Microsoft's hogging of the limelight with its new operating system as an obstacle to that launch, and so he decided to sue, arguing that he registered the trademark "in all entertainment and media categories: press, television, Web and so on." As in other jurisdictions, French trademark law recognizes rights to the use of trademark only in certain categories of activity, allowing, say, a baker of baguettes and a maker of berets to use the same trademark in their respective domains. Gildas has indeed registered the trademark in categories 35, 38, and 41, which covers the entertainment and media categories he cited. However, he did not register it in categories 9 and 42, covering software and the design and development of computers and software, the areas relevant to Microsoft's operating system. Given that the trademarks registered by Gildas and Microsoft are in different categories, it may be difficult for him to argue his case.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft presented oral arguments Wednesday before the U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-year-old patent lawsuit filed by AT&T whose outcome could require U.S. software companies to pay fines for patent-infringing software assembled in other countries. At issue in the case is how the court will interpret an obscure section of U.S. patent law, Section 271F, which says that if a U.S. company makes product components in the U.S and supplies them to companies overseas -- and the products assembled from those components result in patent infringements -- the company must pay patent damages for products assembled overseas as well as those made stateside. AT&T originally filed the case in federal court in New York in 2001 claiming that Microsoft infringed on one of its patents for digitally coding and decoding speech in its Windows OS. AT&T set out to recover damages not only from copies of Windows manufactured in the U.S., but also those made in other countries from the master disk of Windows that was sent to those countries and used to assemble computers with the OS installed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in July 2005 upheld a lower-court ruling that Microsoft is liable to pay fines for foreign sales of patent-infringing software even if it was originally created in the U.S. In court Wednesday, Former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, an attorney with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, argued Microsoft's case, which claims that the patent law was aimed at closing a loophole that allowed companies to manufacture all of the components of patented inventions in the U.S., but avoid patent liability by assembling those U.S.-made components in other countries. "We believe this law was applied improperly by the lower court to find liability based solely on computers manufactured overseas," Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said in a statement. "A U.S. patent was never meant to apply to conduct that takes place entirely abroad." Therefore, Microsoft is asking that the Surpeme Court reverse the lower-court ruling. In a statement, Abha Divine, president and CEO of AT&T Knowledge Ventures, said the company believes that all U.S.-based sources of innovation, including the software development community, can benefit from patent laws that allow for "appropriate and fair" protection of all new inventions and technologies. The outcome of the case will depend on how the Supreme Court interprets the words "components" and "supplies" in the law, said John E. Daniel, partner in law firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel's Intellectual Property Department in New York. "Some people have a concern that [the lower court ruling] seems to be beyond what was intended," he said. "When [Congress] passed the legislation,Â it was thinking of making physical components, not software. The comeback is, 'What's the difference?' You still make copies, and Microsoft makes money based on people selling those copies." Microsoft has had some unusual allies in this case, such as its former nemesis the U.S. government and competitor Yahoo, both of whom have filed briefs in support of the vendor's argument. Companies fear that a precedent may be set that will potentially cost U.S. software companies millions of dollars in fines. There is also a concern that U.S. companies will take their research and development offshore to avoid fines, Daniel said.
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Continuing itsÂ worldwide assault on software piracy, Microsoft has filed 20 lawsuits against resellers accused of distributing unauthorized copies of its software.
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A US lawsuit brought by a company backed by rock group U2 is threatening to reopen old legal wounds for Microsoft. Californian technology company Burst.
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Microsoft Corp is suing a company it claims provides so-called &quot;bulletproof&quot; web hosting to spammers. A company attorney said it is the first time anybody has been sued for allegedly providing spam &quot;support services&quot;.
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The suit, whose plaintiffs include San Franciisco and Los Angeles, is the latest in a string of similar actions brought against Microsoft across the country.
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As it said it would, Novell (NOVL:Nasdaq - news - research) filed a federal lawsuit in Utah alleging that Microsoft (MSFT:Nasdaq - news - research) tried to eliminate competition in the office productivity applications market when Novell owned the
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Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) filed seven lawsuits against senders of spam, or unsolicited e-mail, for transmitting messages without labeling them as sexually explicit
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Microsoft has filed nine new lawsuits against those it says are responsible for spam, including a Web-hosting company that caters to people who send unsolicited e-mail, the software giant said Thursday.
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US software giant Microsoft Corp has sued a group of &quot;spammers&quot; who it accuses of sending unsolicited e-mails promoting pornography to millions of its customers, documents showed.
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The software giant, Microsoft, has filed lawsuits against seven companies for violating the CAN-SPAM &quot;Brown Paper Wrapper&quot; rule.
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SEATTLE  - Microsoft Corp. filed nine new lawsuits against spammers who send unsolicited e-mail, including an e-mail marketing Web hosting company, the world's largest software maker said on Thursday
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Microsoft Corp. has filed class action lawsuits against vendors of sexually explicit commercial e-mail, the Seattle Post-Intelligence said Friday.