Microsoft signs patent deal with JVC
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In its latest deal, Microsoft lands a deal with the Japanese consumer electronics deal. Microsoft will get an undisclosed amount of revenue from the agreement.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft has agreed to settle a multimillion dollar lawsuit brought by thousands of Iowa consumers and businesses who say the company's anticompetitive practices forced them to pay inflated prices for software including Microsoft's Windows, Word and Excel. Seven years after it was filed, the class-action suit finally began on Dec. 1 in a Des Moines, Iowa, courtroom. Microsoft agreed to settle before the jury reached a verdict. Neither the company nor the plaintiffs' law firm announced the amount that Microsoft agreed to pay, but the suit had originally asked for $329 million in damages. In a statement, Microsoft said the terms of the settlement would not be disclosed until judges approve the agreement during hearings in April and August. The case covers Iowa residents who bought certain OS and application software between May 18, 1994, and June 30, 2006. Microsoft also agreed to pay half of any unclaimed proceeds to the Iowa Department of Education, to be used for bridging the digital and technical divide in Iowa schools through the purchase of computer hardware and software, according to a statement by Rich Wallis, associate general counsel for Microsoft. Customers across the U.S. filed dozens of antitrust class-action suits against Microsoft, but this was only the second one to go to trial, according to a statement by the plaintiffs' law firm, Zelle, Hofmann, Voelbel, Mason and Gette. Microsoft also agree to settle a Minnesota case for $182 million before it reached a verdict. In 2001, Microsoft agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice and the attorneys general for 19 states, the company said. Microsoft has also reached settlements with three more state governments. Whereas all those cases alleged that Microsoft harmed competition by including certain applications in its OS (thus essentially barring other software vendors from the market), the Iowa and Minnesota cases allege that Microsoft used its enormous market share to overcharge consumers. The only remaining private class-action lawsuit of that type is in Mississippi, according to Microsoft. Microsoft has denied overcharging those customers. "During our opening this week, we showed the real reasons for Microsoft's success. We demonstrated that the plaintiffs' core allegations in this case are decades old, long resolved and have no impact on the issues in this case," Wallis said when the Iowa case opened in December. "The majority of the plaintiffs' claims predate the class period in this case. The allegations that came afterward were addressed by the government case eight years ago. Microsoft accepted responsibility, changed its practices, and to this day we continue to live and work under a consent decree." The Microsoft operating systems covered in this case include MS-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows for Workgroups, Windows NT Workstation, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The applications include Word, Excel and Office versions designed for computers with the above MS-DOS or Windows operating systems. Â
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Microsoft announced partnerships with Walt Disney, NBC Universal and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to boost online video sales.
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ON the heels of devices such as Sanyo&#39;s Xacti C1 and Panasonic&#39;s D-SNAP, which cut down video camera bulk by writing video to storage cards instead of tape or disc, comes the Everio range from JVC.
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Microsoft and LG Electronics sign cross-licensing patent agreement that covers Linux-based embedded devices.
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Microsoft Corp won an estimated $500 million, 5-year Internet advertising deal with MTV Networks owner Viacom Inc, giving the software giant a boost against rivals Google Inc and Yahoo Inc.
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Victor Co. of Japan, better known as JVC, said Friday it has developed what it claims to be the world&#39;s first read-only disc capable of storing data in both the Blu-ray and the conventional DVD formats.
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Japanese electronics maker Kenwood Corp.  and asset manager Sparx Group  will buy a combined stake of about 30 percent in JVC  in a $291 million deal aimed at getting the loss-making JVC off Matsushita Electric Industrial's  consolidated accounts.
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(InfoWorld) - Citing a mistaken filing, Microsoft has abandoned a patent application for technology in its Visual Studio software development platform that originated outside the company, a Microsoft representative said on Tuesday. The application involved Microsoft's implementation of the BlueJ developer environment, which the company calls "Object Test Bench," said the representative, who attributed the company's response to an InfoWorld press inquiry on the subject to Jason Matusow, Microsoft's senior directory of IP and interoperability. "Microsoft mistakenly filed for a patent on a technology included in components of Visual Studio 2005 that was based upon an academic project to help individuals grasp introductory concepts of software programming through pictorial representation of code," the representative said. The company had been notified by Michael KÃ¶lling, the creator of BlueJ, that the patent application covered technology substantially similar to his project. BlueJ is an IDE for teaching object-oriented programming and Java to beginners, according to KÃ¶lling's blog. "Microsoft agrees with Professor KÃ¶lling, and in keeping with the companyâs standards for quality patent filings, [it is] expressly abandoning the patent application with the USPTO (United States Patent & Trademark Office) through normal procedures," the company said. KÃ¶lling could not be reached for comment on Tuesday. But in his blog, he raised the question of whether Microsoft's patent application would be denied because it was based on "prior art," which is technology that already existed. "While I am sure we would have had a good case to file for prior art, and while it is likely that this would have stopped the application, I really have better things to do with my time," he wrote. In a blog entry last Friday, KÃ¶lling had expressed fears that the patent application could destroy BlueJ.
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The head of the International Standards Organization committee JTC 1 has given her official approval to giving consideration to Microsoft's Office Open XML document standard under a fast-track process.  This despite some opposition, though apparently fewer formal objections than had earlier been anticipated.
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Microsoft said Thursday that it had settled an eight-year patent dispute relating to a feature that allows embedded links in its browser that resulted in a $521 million jury verdict against it.
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Microsoft won a round in its battle with patent licensing company Timeline.
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Texas Pacific Group  and Cerberus  have submitted bids for control of struggling consumer electronics firm JVC , sources familiar with the matter said on Monday.
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A seemingly simple case regarding whether Microsoft had the right to replicate speech recognition software it had licensed -- or rather, thought it had licensed -- from AT&T, and then sell that software abroad as a component of Windows Vista, has exploded into what is now extremely likely to become a landmark case in US patent and copyright law.
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Microsoft Corp.  and South  Korea&#39;s LG Electronics (066570.KS) said on Thursday they agreed  a patent cross-licensing deal, sending LG shares to their  highest in more than a year.
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SEATTLE - Software giant Microsoft Corp. and corporate network software provider Citrix Systems Inc. said on Tuesday that they had agreed to collaborate and license each other&#39;s technology.
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Microsoft signed a rare deal with an  open source software group on Thursday, taking a step towards  meeting sanctions imposed by the European Commission for  antitrust violations.