Microsoft wins patent case with Timeline
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft won a round in its battle with patent licensing company Timeline. On May 29, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington dismissed Timeline's accusations of patent infringement, ruling that Microsoft's patent licensing agreement with Timeline is valid. The case dates back to 2005 when Timeline sued ProClarity for patent infringement. A few months later, Microsoft acquired ProClarity, and shortly after that, Timeline added Microsoft to the ProClarity suit. In the suit, Timeline claimed to have terminated its contract with Microsoft based on breach of contract and charged the software giant with patent infringement. In the May 29 ruling, the judge decided that Timeline couldn't terminate the licensing agreement based on its breach of contract claims. As a result, the court ruled that the licensing agreement was valid and thus Microsoft wasn't infringing on any patents. Since the ruling, Timeline filed a breach of contract suit against Microsoft in Washington State Superior Court, it said in a June 4 press release. It also may appeal the district court ruling. Microsoft lost an earlier separate battle against Timeline. In 2002, an appeals court ruled that Microsoft couldn't allow its customers to combine their own code with Microsoft products if the added code resulted in a process that infringed Timeline's patent. The Timeline patents relate to technology used in database software, and Microsoft used them in its Small Business Financial Manager product. Timeline recently changed its focus from a developer of software applications to a company dedicated to licensing its intellectual property. Timeline did not return calls seeking comment. Microsoft also has not replied to requests for comment.
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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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Judge dismisses one of several patent claims by Alcatel-Lucent against Microsoft, but others remain.
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Microsoft began its appeal yesterday against a $565m judgment that it infringed on a patent held by Eolas, a University of California spin-off.
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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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Microsoft Corp. on Thursday lost the first of six patent lawsuits brought by Paris-based telecom equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent, and a federal district court jury set damages at $1.5 billion.
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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.
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Microsoft Corp  ended three years of resistance on Monday and finally agreed to comply with a landmark 2004 antitrust decision by the European Commission.
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Microsoft is fighting a rejection by US patent authorities of a patent for its FAT filesystem, the company said on Thursday. Meanwhile, it&#39;s celebrating a jury decision clearing it of patent infringement charges
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(InfoWorld) - A judge in a San Diego court late Thursday dismissed one of several patent claims Alcatel-LucentÂ has made against Microsoft in several high-profile cases against the vendor, but that does not mean the software company is out of the woods yet. According to Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans, a judge in the U.S. District Court in San Diego ruled that Microsoft does not infringe a patent for speech-recognition technology asserted by Alcatel-Lucent. This is the only patent that was to be considered during a second trial in the series of claims, which had been scheduled in San Diego on March 19, he said. That trial has now been cancelled. Last week, a jury in the first of what had been six separate patent-infringement casesÂ ordered Microsoft to pay $1.5 billionÂ in damages to Alcatel-Lucent for infringing on patents for MP3 encoding and decoding technology. It was believed to be the largest patent-infringement damage award in history in the case that the then Lucent Technologies first filed against Microsoft and partners Dell and Gateway in 2003. Many believe the decision could put other companies that use MP3 technology at risk for patent-infringement claims from Alcatel-Lucent. The next and third case dealing with Alcatel-Lucent's patent-infringement claims, which focuses on user-interface technology and lists Microsoft, Dell, and Gateway as defendants, is scheduled to be held May 21, Evans said. Three other trials on Alcatel-Lucent patent-infringement claims will follow this year, with Microsoft being listed as defendants in two of those. The Alcatel-Lucent suit is not the only major patent case Microsoft is currently dealing with. Microsoft presented opening arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court last week in a six-year patent dispute with AT&T.
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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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A U.S. judge praises a new timeframe for Microsoft to fix its technical documentation required in its antitrust settlement.
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The European Court of First Instance has set a date of September 17 to rule on Microsoft's appeal of a 2004 antitrust verdict that forced it to pay over $600 million in fines and make changes to its Windows operating systems. Microsoft has maintained it did nothing anti-competitive.
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A European court has upheld the bulk of an antitrust ruling against Microsoft Corp. made by the European Commission in 2004
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Microsoft has reached a $536 million legal settlement with Novell, resolving all outstanding antitrust claims by Novell against Microsoft involving NetWare and its other products.
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Microsoft Corp. is fighting a rejection by U.S. patent authorities of a patent for its FAT (file allocation table) file system, the company said Thursday. Meanwhile, it's celebrating a jury decision clearing it of patent infringement charges related to a feature in its Office software.
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A European court confirmed on Tuesday that it will rule on September 17 on whether software giant Microsoft  broke European Union antitrust regulations.