US Patent Office returns to Microsoft-Eolas fray
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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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Red Hat Inc.  Chief Executive  Matthew Szulik said his company last year held talks with  Microsoft Corp  over a patent agreement that broke down  before the software giant signed a deal with Red Hat rival  Novell Inc .
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Microsoft may have to pull its Office suite from the shelves in South Korea as a result of losing a patent lawsuit in that country, according to published reports.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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In a heavy blow to Microsoft&#39;s intellectual property rights, the US Patent and Trademark Office has initially rejected Microsoft&#39;s patent claims on the universally popular FAT (file allocation table) file system.
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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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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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And OS competition extends to number plates Channel Weekly The atmosphere at the Christmas party for Microsoft's lawyers might be a little quieter this year after the software vendor finally called time on its attempts to get the EU to agree to the Gates/Ballmer vision of competition.â¦
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MacCentral - Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday said that it is looking for ways to work more closely with developers of the Open Office open source project, while at the same time, apparently reserving the right to sue them, according to a legal agreement between Microsoft and Open Office's major sponsor, Sun Microsystems Inc., made public this week.
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Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) warned Asian governments on Thursday they could face patent lawsuits for using the Linux operating system instead of its Windows software.
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Analysis If the antitrust lawsuit that Novell filed against Microsoft comes to court, it will reopen long-forgotten battles over technologies that most of us will even have trouble remembering.
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Microsoft quest to have Open XML approved by the ISO as a global technology standard seems to have recovered from a setback it suffered last week.
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Microsoft is appealing a $565 million judgment awarded to Eolas, a spinoff of the University of California, in a patent infringement case.
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By Benjamin J. Romano, The Seattle Times  Jun. 18--Just as a major episode in Microsoft's antitrust saga was  winding down, a complaint from its biggest rival threatens to push the  company's competitive practices back into the spotlight.
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How significant is the US Patent and Trademark Office&#39;s initial rejection of Microsoft&#39;s FAT (file allocation table) file system patent claims?
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Telecommunications giant AT&amp;T and Microsoft took a patent battle to the US Supreme Court Wednesday, in a case that has wide implications for US firms doing business abroad.
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Microsoft, which will on Monday learn whether a top European Union court has annulled the landmark 2004 antitrust ruling against the US software developer, is warning technology rivals they should be careful what they wish for.
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Microsoft Corp. settled legal disputes yesterday with two of its largest remaining antagonists, ensuring that its antitrust deal with the Justice Department will not be appealed to the US