Microsoft faces Vista trademark challenge
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A French television executive said Tuesday he had taken legal action against Microsoft for breaching his right to the trademark &quot;Vista,&quot; which the US software giant uses for its new operating system.
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Microsoft Corp. said on Monday it  expects rival Google Inc. to file a complaint with a federal  judge arguing that changes Microsoft has agreed to make to its  Windows Vista operating system fall short of addressing  concerns that its computer search function puts Google and  other potential competitors at a disadvantage.
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SEATTLE A central Pennsylvania company is named in a lawsuit filed by Microsoft on claims of counterfeit and illicit certificates of authenticity.
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Google Inc. is arguing that Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista violates a 2002 antitrust settlement because its indexing software is hard to turn off. But an expert says indexing can be disabled easily.
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Less than three months after Microsoft lost a landmark antitrust case in Europe, a Norwegian software company filed a new complaint Thursday, challenging the software giantâs bundling of its Web browser with its Windows operating system.
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Google's claims that Microsof's Vista desktop search violates its antitrust agreement could be difficult to prove.
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Announcements by Yahoo and Google show that Microsoft faces challenges to its business software franchises.
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Two U.S. software firms are asking the  European Commission to take action against Microsoft's   new Vista operating system, the Wall Street Journal reported on  Thursday.
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A company called Office Live files trademark infringement suit over Microsoft's Office Live on-demand productivity tools.
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Does Microsoft's official trademark application for Excel signal an infringement crackdown?
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Microsoft has given the go ahead for users to buy the low-cost OEM copies of Windows Vista now appearing on sites like Newegg.com; however, they would be expected to adhere to the licensing terms just like any other computer manufacturer.
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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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A US lawsuit brought by a company backed by rock group U2 is threatening to reopen old legal wounds for Microsoft. Californian technology company Burst.
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A lawsuit alleging that Microsoft Windows Vista Capable users were misled about the capabilities of the operating system will go to trial Oct. 28, 2008.
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Microsoft Corp. presented oral arguments Wednesday before the U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-year-old patent lawsuit filed by AT&amp;T Inc. whose outcome could require U.S. software companies to pay fines for patent-infringing software assembled in other countries.
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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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Microsoft on Wednesday published a list of the applications that have received either "Certified for Windows Vista" or "Works with Windows Vista" status. Of the 787 listed, 103 are Microsoft's own products, indicating few software developers have completed the logo process.