Schering Exercises License Option
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Drug giant Schering-Plough Corp. said Monday that it will pay $10 million to exercise its option to license ViroPharma Inc.&#39;s cold treatment in the United States and Canada.
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Wednesday was the first day in the life of a new Central License Agreement for music copyright holders throughout Europe. Now, license authorities and music publishers have agreed to dismantle their "home territories" and recognize each other's copyrights. Is this the prototype for the EU's new single software patent authority?
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(InfoWorld) - A recent federal court ruling pertaining to open-source software in model railroads could derail enforcement of open-source licenses altogether, according to Mark Radcliffe, general counsel for the Open Source Initiative. If allowed to stand, the decision could withhold an important and expected remedy from open-source licensors, that being the ability to get an injunction against license violations, Radcliffe said. But the case does not necessarily set a precedent for other judges to follow, countered Eben Moglen, founding director of the Software Freedom Law Center. In the case, the plaintiff, Robert Jacobsen, claimed that the defendant, Matthew Katzer, sought royalties from Jacobsen on software covered by invalid patents obtained on open-source software. The software in this case was from the JMRI (Java Model Railroad Interface) Project, with which Jacobsen is involved. The original complaint is viewable here. According to court filings by Jacobsen, Katzer filed a patent application tailored to the capabilities of JMRI three days after the release of new JMRI software in 2002. The plaintiff alleged breach of the obscure Artistic License for open-source software and copyright infringement due to the removal of original copyright notices and substituting the name of Katzen's company, Radcliffe said.Â  But in a ruling on the case in San Francisco on August 17, Judge Jeffrey S. White denied a motion by the plaintiff seeking a preliminary injunction from infringing copyrighted open-source material. To establish copyright infringement, the plaintiff needs to show ownership of the copyrights and copying by the defendants, the judge said. Defendants, meanwhile, said they voluntarily ceased all potentially infringing activities. "This is one of the first cases about enforcement of any open-source licenses," Radcliffe said. In his ruling, the judge said the Artistic License was a contract and the failure to include copyright notices was not a restriction on the scope of the license, according to Radcliffe. Jacobsen sought to have Katzer put copyright notices in his software reflecting that it was open source. "What the court said was that remedy is not available," said Radcliffe. The remedy for contract violations under US law is damages, not injunctive relief, in which the court would order a party to cease a violation, Radcliffe wrote in his blog. The case, Radcliffe said, is a blow to the fundamental basis of open-source software, he said. "Most people in open source believe if you violate the license, you're outside it, Radcliffe said. "What this case indicates is that expectation may be wrong," he said. Assessing damages for use of open-source software is difficult because the software is given away free, according to Victoria Hall, attorney for the plaintiff. "What are the damages for an open-source project? These aren't your typical contract damages," she said. The case raises questions about the rights of those who release software via open source. "What rights do they have, and how strong are those rights?" Hall asked. But she and Moglen pointed out that the case does not necessarily set a precedent for future cases. "It seems to me a not very important ruling," said Moglen, who has not been involved in the case. The Software Freedom Law Center provides free legal services to those who make and distribute free and open-source software. "I do believe that the use of a more carefully drafted and more industry-tested license will probably help courts and other parties to deal with software in a more informed and accurate way," Moglen said. To avoid the lack of clarity in the Artistic License, the JMRI Project will switch to the GNU General Public License. "I think the big advantage [of GPL] is the automatic license revocation that is present in GPL that is not present in Artistic License," said Hall. Jacobsen also plans to appeal the judge's ruling, said Hall. Katzer defined to comment on the case. His attorneys did not return phone calls from InfoWorld. The judge set a September 14 date for a case management conference to further deliberate on the matter.
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SANTA CLARA, CALIF. -- Noting two evolving areas of software licensing, Microsoft is pondering how to license when multiple instances of an application are run on a single computer, but is not eyeing a plan for utility-based computing, in which charges are based on individual usage.
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Schering ups '04 earnings, Yasmin sales forecasts (4:41 AM ET) LONDON (CBS.MW) -- German drugmaker Schering( SHR )(DE:717200DE:717200)said it was upping its 2004 earnings forecast on a more favorable tax rate ...
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. is licensing the new UI (user interface) in Office 2007 for free so developers can build applications that look similar to the programs in the suite, the company said Tuesday. Microsoft is licensing both design and functionality of Office 2007's RibbonX UI, as well as offering guidelines for implementing it, through a new program, said Takeshi Numoto, Microsoft general manager for Office Client. Developers and ISVs (independent software vendors) can sign up with Microsoft on the Web and register products that will use the UI. More information about the new licensing program can be found here . Microsoft said it decided to launch the licensing program after being approached by ISV partners that wanted to build applications using Office 2007 as a platform. The RibbonX UI is a completely new interface for Office 2007 that is designed to make common Office features easier to use. According to Numoto, the company has spent hundreds of millions of dollars revamping Office 2007's UI; indeed, it is the suite's most significant new feature. The company wants "qualified developers" to be able to use these investments, but it also wants to protect its proprietary investment from unauthorized use. "The new licensing program enables developers and ISVs to benefit legally from Microsoftâs innovation by using the UI for their own applications," he said. Andrew Brust, chief of new technology for New York consulting firm twentysix New York, said a new formal program for licensing RibbonX makes a lot of sense because the UI is "the result of a significant investment by Microsoft in usability research and UI development," and Microsoft naturally wants to protect that.
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Schering continues its strong sales and earnings growth.
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The pharmaceutical sells European rights to a promising asthma drug.
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Microsoft is offering a new subscription model to small businesses that will allow them to use the company&#39;s software for less cost than the currently available licensing model.
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The NHS has struck a discounted deal with computer giant Microsoft to renew its licence for desktop products. The Department of Health said the deal would save the NHS Â£330m on the current terms.
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(InfoWorld) - MicrosoftÂ has signed up the first licensee for the workgroup server protocols the European Commission ordered it to open up to competitors in aÂ 2004 antitrust ruling, it said Thursday. The announcement comes a week after the Commission sent Microsoft a "statement of objections," saying it was not satisfied that the information Microsoft planned to provide under its Work Group Server Protocol Program (WSPP) warranted the prices the company planned to charge. The licensee, Quest Software of Aliso Viejo, California, plans to use Microsoft's User and Group Administration protocol set in products based on Microsoft's Active Directory, extending the way those products link with Unix, Linux, and Java authentication systems, the companies said Thursday. Quest develops software for Active Directory administration and data recovery, in addition to tools for application, database and server administration. The companies signed their licensing deal on March 1, the day the Commission published its objections, said Tom Brookes, a spokesman for Microsoft. Quest will pay the full list price to which the Commission objected, 5.25 percent of net revenue on the products in which the protocols are being integrated, Brookes said. The Commission ordered Microsoft to create the WSPP as one of the remedies in a March 2004 antitrust ruling, in which it found Microsoft had abused its dominant position in the desktop operating system market to gain advantages in the markets for media players and workgroup server software. It ordered Microsoft to pay a â¬497 million (then around $600 million) fine, release a version of Windows without an integrated media player, and release details of the protocols used for communication between computers running the desktop and workgroup server versions of Windows, to enable competitors to build interoperable software. Microsoft is stillÂ appealing the ruling, but paid the fine and released the software and protocol information anyway. Since the ruling, the Commission has complained that Microsoft is not releasing the right kind of information fast enough, while Microsoft has protested that the Commission has not made its demands clear. In July 2006, the CommissionÂ fined Microsoft a further â¬280.5 millionÂ for the delays,Â a ruling Microsoft appealedÂ in October. Last week, the Commission signalled that the protocol information Microsoft had provided was not innovative enough to justify its price. Microsoft created a similar licensing program in the U.S., in response to an antitrust ruling there. That program has so far attracted 27 licensees. Â
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Nutritional supplements tested by a  World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited laboratory and approved by  men's tennis body the ATP will be available to players from  next year's Australian Open, officials said Tuesday.
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InfoWorld - SANTA CLARA, CALIF. -- Noting two evolving areas of software licensing, Microsoft is pondering how to license when multiple instances of an application are run on a single computer, but is not eyeing a plan for utility-based computing, in which charges are based on individual usage.
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BERLIN -- German chemical and drug maker Bayer AG and New Jersey pharmaceutical company Schering-Plough Corp. announced Monday they have entered a strategic alliance under which Schering-Plough will distribute
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BOSTON, Aug. 29 -- Schering-Plough Corp. on Tuesday agreed to pay $435 million and plead guilty to conspiracy to settle a federal investigation into marketing of its drugs for unapproved uses and overcharging Medicaid for certain drugs.
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CV Therapeutics out-licenses one of its technologies.
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(InfoWorld) - A U.K. company that has made a business out of selling preowned licenses for Microsoft Corp. products has brought its products to the U.S. for the first time. Disclic recently closed its first deal selling licenses it procured from companies going out of business in the U.K. to a company in the U.S., said Noel Unwin, a director of Discount-licensing.com, the Web site and trading arm of the company that sells the licenses. Discount-licensing.com sold licenses for Microsoft Office it obtained from two companies that divested their property in the U.K. -- Food Brokers and Quidnunc -- to WaferTech LLC, a U.S. semiconductor manufacturer, he said. Discount-licensing.com also recently made its first deal selling licenses it procured from a U.S. company to companies in the U.K., Unwin added. Discount-Licensing.com sold preowned licenses from an insolvent U.S.company, Cornell Trading Inc., to U.K. businesses in September and October. The U.K. businesses that purchased former Cornell Trading licenses were Benefit 2 Business, which purchase licenses for Exchange 2003; Abnormal Loads, which purchased licenses for Terminal Server 2003 CALs; 3D Computer Systems, which purchased licenses for Exchange, Windows and Terminal Server 2003 CALs; and Orange IS, which purchased Office 2003 Professional licenses. Unwin said his company did not sell preowned licenses in the U.S. until recently because it believed there would be license restrictions in reselling licenses from one region to another. Discount-licensing.com worked with Microsoft to ensure this was not the case before selling its licenses, he said. Microsoft could not be reached for comment through its public relations firm on Wednesday. But the company has acknowledged in the past it is legal to transfer product licenses for software owned by companies that are divesting. Disclic has built its Discount-licensing.com business since November 2005, gathering up Microsoft product licenses from insolvent companies and distributing them through its Web site. The company recently updated its site with comprehensive product search and ordering features, so customers can do their entire transactions online. Customers can access Discount-licensing.com's product search feature here Unwin said prices for U.S. customers are generally 15 percent less expensive than prices for U.K. customers. The company sells preowned licenses for about 35 percent to 40 percent cheaper than the original cost of the license. Because of these discounts, software resellers have been purchasing software from Discount-licensing.com to sell to their customers so they can make higher margins, Unwin added. Discount-licensing.com has added several hundred new customers so far in 2006, in addition to repeat customers. The most popular licenses the company sells are for Office XP, Unwin said. Other product licenses that do well include the SQL Server database and Exchange 2003 messaging server.