Microsoft Admonished by U.S. District Court Judge 178
An anonymous reader writes "The Seattle Times reports that the judge in the z4 'product activation' patent infringement case has increased the jury's original $115 million verdict against Microsoft by $25 million. Both Microsoft and Autodesk (another defendant) were admonished by the judge for misconduct. The judge wrote 'The Court concludes that Defendants attempted to bury the relevant 107 exhibits ... in a massive pile of decoys' and called one failure to disclose evidence 'an intentional attempt by Defendants to mislead z4 and this Court.'"
software patents are just a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus "product activation" must have been reinvented a million times or something.
That said MS deserves to get smacked if they try to mess about with the courts.
For a few dollars more.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure with for a few extra bucks MS can buy whatever legal resources (including judges, prosecutors, congressmen, lobbyists) it needs to make it all better. Ain't it great living in a society where money rules all....
"Money's like honey, my little sonny, and a rich man's joke is always funny"
Re:Everyone has to pay Royalty Eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ooh, the irony (Score:3, Insightful)
Yet again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Props to the judge for calling MS on its shenanigans; jeers for the penalty being insignificant to them.
These actions by MS are indicative of the collapse of the rule of law in the US. Without meaningful punishments for attempting to circumvent the laws and/or undermine the legal process, it will not change. $25MM is hardly a disincentive for MS.
IMO, the lawyers who used the obfuscatory tactic should be disbarred... and personally fined for contempt of court. And the executive(s) who authorized the tactic (or were responsible for the law team) should also be personally fined. And production of MS products should be halted until they can prove they are not still abusing the patent (by providing their code, in entirety, for review by the justice system, with any relevant sections clearly denoted).
Re:Everyone has to pay Royalty Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because anything, at all, that hurts Microsoft is good for the rest of the industry. Period.
Look, I despise software patents; I think they're one of the worst hindrances to technological progress ever devised in modern times.* But one of the main reasons these bullshit patents are so prevalent is because the 900 lb. gorillas of the industry always have thousands of them, and aren't shy about using them to threaten competitors. If the largest and strongest of those gorillas (the 1000 lb. gorilla, let's say, which is currently Microsoft) can be forced on occasion to, um, slim down a little, that makes things just the teeniest bit easier for the rest of us. And it brings us closer to a truly competitive marketplace in which, just maybe, we'll see the conditions for the growth of a significant lobby, made up of companies that have suffered from the absurdity of the current patent laws, to try to do away with the stupid things entirely.
*Qualifier added because software patents, as onerous as they are, don't compare to, say, burning people at the stake. It's important to keep things in perspective.
Software Patents = Welfare for Lawyers (Score:4, Insightful)
They're basically patenting logic and Math equations.
All it's doing is making patent law more profitable.
Imagine how many lawyer would be out of work without Software Patents.
Software Patents = Welfare for Lawyers
Book 'Em (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:For a few dollars more.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:For a few dollars more.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Ahahahah
Thanks, I was looking forward to a long dull business trip this afternoon, you've brightened my day considerably...
oh wait, you were serious, weren't you?
Re:Everyone has to pay Royalty Eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it isn't. There's not a single activated product I can think of that hasn't been cracked and made freely available to software pirates.
Where activation has been extremely successful is in forcing honest customers to buy the same product over and over again as their hardware fails or is replaced. That's its real function - to artificially obsolete software so developers can get more money for less effort.
Re:For a few dollars more.... (Score:5, Insightful)
By what other means would you have our society ruled?
Money, at least, has the virtue of flowing automatically to those who labor and innovate and create pleasure for others.
That is only true for small amount of money, for larger amounts of money, it is not labour that makes money, but money itself.
Take for example, landowners in the past. Even if a non-landowner worked hard, it was very difficult to become a landowner due to the power of landowners over their tenants.
Or, if a person/group own a sufficent amount of the businesses in a particular area, it's very difficult for a new person to challenge that, as the existing group can raise their prices to supply the new business, resulting in the existing group profiting off the work of someone else, which is why monoploys are harmeful.
Re:Yet again... (Score:5, Insightful)
IMO, the lawyers who used the obfuscatory tactic should be disbarred.
At the very least they should be referred to the ethic's board in the jurisdiction. Another example of Corporate America (and their lawyers!) getting a slap on the wrists. Any other company sued by MS for infrindging patents would probably end up bankrupt by the fines (no less the court costs). $140M is a drop in the bucket for MS...much like $140 would be to me.
Enough robber-baron worship (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Enough already with the MS witch-hunt. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Software Patents = Welfare for Lawyers (Score:4, Insightful)
The US has started to rest to much of its laurels on "Intellectual Property." Some intellectual property, you used to be able sell (books, music) and make money off it that way. This property was protected by copyright. So someone can make a book with a world like "Lord of the Rings" (and many have) or a game like Doom or music like (in same genre) Michael Jacksons - they just can't reproduced the original and claim it as theirs. Ideas and culture freely circulated around this way.
Some intellectual property (University research, public domain data) you used to be able to share freely and it enriched the whole economy -- helped your company manufacture better things or things cheaper, etcetera.
Patenting ideas themselves does nothing but stifle all innovation as ideas get owned. Common approaches to problems are now infinitely patentable to every new medium. Ad infinitum.
The US (and the West) will perish under a burden of its own making if we continue down this path. Patents of this type punish the innovative companies and breed hyenas that do nothing but litigate the rest of us into submission and poverty.
Re:Microsoft acting unethically? (Score:1, Insightful)
You're both misreading it. The rule stipulates that a company may not have one person acting unethically; there are no restrictions on several people doing so.
Wanted: Old school judge (Score:1, Insightful)
Oddly enough, MS and others probably do this all of the time. This judge threw the flag while others assume that type of conduct is business as usual, no big deal. In the appeals process, MS will eventually find an old school judge that accepts this practice as normal and will not raise the issue and as almost always appears to happen, the one with the bigger pocket and connections will win.
Re:Enough robber-baron worship (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Keep it in perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
Gates would never have been in a position to do good if he hadn't done evil to get there. If he didn't do that evil, others would have prospered and perhaps contributed more than Gates ever could. We'll never know.
In terms of percentage of income given to charity, I spent over four years of my life working exclusively for charity, 100%. No income, lived on savings. So you can take your straw man, shove him where the sun don't shine and light him on fire for all the good he's doing you in winning points in this debate.
This last bit is just nonsensical, a complete non-sequiter. Was it just an excuse to quote Godel? It barely even qualifies as a straw man. Here's what Godel would say: "Yes, Bill Gates proves my point about how easy it is to become a dictator in America." I'm an anarchist, my friend, and not one of those libertarian types, either. So I speak of the free market and competition not as some end-all, be-all, greatest system in the world, but as the system of rules we all have to fucking play by.
So far, you've done a piss poor job of convincing me that I should be licking Bill Gates twat, and you have exhibited substandard reading comprehension skills. Either that or you are deliberately not understanding my point in order to better convince the feeble minded of your own. So let me try again.
Bill Gates got rich by fucking over the world. Had he not done so, we would likely all be better off. So there would be more money spread amongst more hands, possibly leading to even greater relief of suffering. There would be less poverty, less people in need of his fucking charity. More people, giving more money, to less needy people. So it's not very insightful to just look at Billy's charity and say, "ooh, look at all the good he's done." The question is, does it outweigh the bad? I say no, it doesn't.
Re:For a few dollars more.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Everyone has to pay Royalty Eh? (Score:2, Insightful)
This principle is also known as two wrongs not making a right.