Microsoft&#39;s FAT Patent Rejected for Now
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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 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. Several news outlets reported Monday that a South Korean Supreme Court ruling on Friday refused a request from Microsoft that patents obtained by Hankuk Aviation University professor Lee Keung-Haie in 1997 be nullified. The decision strengthens the case of Lee and the company acting as his agent, called P and IB, which filed for damages against Microsoft in 2000 for infringing on Lee's patents, according to a report by the Agence France-Presse . Now that Microsoft's request has been struck down, P and IB leader Kim Kil-Hae said the company and Lee have a better chance at winning damages in their lawsuit and also in stopping the sale of the version of Office that includes the patented technology, according to a report by the AFP. Lee and P and IB are seeking damages of 70 billion won, or about $75 million. In an e-mailed statement through its public relations firm, Microsoft said it does not anticipate any interruption in the sales of Office in Korea, and is positive about its chance in the current infringement case that is still pending. Lee and P and IB filed suit against Microsoft in 2000 for infringing on Lee's patents for technologies that automatically switch the input mode of Office between the Korean and English languages. That case remains unsettled in an appeals court after Microsoft filed a separate lawsuit attempting to invalidate Lee's patents. The patent dispute is just one of Microsoft's legal woes in South Korea. In May,Â South Korea ruled against MicrosoftÂ in an antitrust case, forcing the company to sell a version of its Windows OS without its media player and instant-messaging programs after finding that their inclusion breached antitrust laws. An antitrust case in Europe also has not gone well for the Redmond, Washington, software vendor. In March 2004, the European Commission ruled that Microsoft must sell Windows without media player software in the European Union to compete fairly with rivals there. The ruling alsoÂ ordered Microsoft to provide informationÂ that allows rival server software vendors to design server products that interoperate well with Windows PCs. Microsoft is still embroiled in its legal battle with the Commission and continues to file documents to prove it is complying with the antitrust ruling. The Commission fined Microsoft $357 million in July for failing to comply with the antitrust order, and could face more fines of up to $3 million per day if it does not meet the Commission's latest deadline to prove compliance.
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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 US jury found that Microsoft infringed audio patents held by the world's biggest software maker Alcatel-Lucent.   Microsoft has been ordered to pay Pounds 778m in damages, however the firm says it may appeal the ruling.   It says the verdict is unsupported by the law or the facts.
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WASHINGTON--A federal appeals court on Thursday wrestled with whether to overturn or uphold a lower court&#39;s $565 million judgment against Microsoft in the biggest patent dispute in Web history.
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IP lawyers find support for IP laws Businesses and academics would oppose any watering down of the patent examination process, a new report has found.â¦
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Judge dismisses one of several patent claims by Alcatel-Lucent against Microsoft, but others remain.
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A US appeal court has delivered a mixed ruling in a patent dispute between Research in Motion (RIM) and NTP. It upholding a decision that RIM had infringed on patents held by NTP, but cancelled an injunction
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WASHINGTON - A US federal appeals court has upheld a lower court&#39;s patent infringement finding against Research in Motion (RIM).
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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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In a preliminary ruling, the government rejected Microsoft&#39;s 1996 patent on technology for saving files on computers using easy-to-remember names.
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CNET is reporting that US District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco has denied a request by the Antitrust Division of the federal Department of Justice to issue an injunction against Oracle&#39;s hostile acquisition of business software maker PeopleSoft
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Almost everything that can be said has been said about the latest moves by Microsoft to create Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) about Linux. Countless pundits and analysts have pointed out that Microsoft threats are toothless. Some have noted that Microsoft has singled out Linux and OpenOffice, the biggest threats to its monopoly on operating systems and office suites. Surely Microsoft could claim that the *BSDs infringe on similar patents if not the same ones. But the *BSDs do not pose as great a threat to the company. Others have pointed out that Microsoft would be insane to pull an SCO and sue its own customers. Still others have noted that IBM and/or OIN could respond to a patent war with a massive retaliation in patent infringement claims. I have no doubt that Microsoft has lifted a lot of GPL code (more likely algorithms) for Windows, which would prevent Microsoft from following through with its threats. To do so would require that Microsoft open its own code to scrutiny. The list goes on, and others have covered the angles very well. There is one perspective I haven't yet seen, at least not the way I propose to deal with it. This perspective follows below.
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The US Patent and Trademark Office has preliminarily rejected a Microsoft patent on a system for recognizing computer files, a victory for &quot;open source&quot; advocates
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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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Let the bidding begin! A federal judge Thursday rejected a government attempt to block Oracle&#39;s proposed takeover of rival PeopleSoft.
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Microsoft Corp. is fighting a rejection by US patent authorities of a patent for its FAT (file allocation table) file system, the company said Thursday.