Microsoft Admonished by U.S. District Court Judge

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.'"

Can't help but think of SCO

[Weaselmancer]

He cited several examples in which the defendants failed to fully and promptly disclose evidence, calling one instance "an intentional attempt by Defendants to mislead z4 and this Court."

Ok, so if this is an actionable item - why hasn't SCO been nailed with something similar? They've been doing the smoke and mirrors thing for years now.

What gives? Why can a judge nail MS with this, but not SCO?

Re:Software Patents = Welfare for Lawyers

[91degrees]

They're basically patenting logic and Math equations.

So why is this any worse than patenting physical and chemical effects?

Re:Everyone has to pay Royalty Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

in reply to your questions and also other replies made already:

two wrongs do not make a right.

software patents is bad
patent violation is bad
lying in court is bad

none of these things can cancel another out.

It would be hilarious if MS was taken out of business due to patent violations, but the eventual fallout from such an event would be disastrous for absolutely everybody.

Re:Everyone has to pay Royalty Eh?

[JimDaGeek]

I agree, why is everyone against software patents except when the judgement is against Microsoft?

Not just Microsoft, but all large companies with enough money to actually change the patent system. See, here in the USA our crooked politicians only bow down to one master. The mighty US dollar (or not so mighty). Mega-corps have enough money to bribe politicians to actually get laws made and/or changed.

I personally hope to see tons of software patent suits against Microsoft and other big corps with a lot of software patents. If these big corps pay out enough money, they might just send some money to our crooked politicians to buy some laws.

The only negative to my "theory" is that I wouldn't put it past the mega-corps to try to "reform" software patents by making software patents available to big corps, but make it real hard for small/medium companies to get them.

Re:Microsoft acting unethically?

[rizole]

I read it like this:

It's critical that no one person in a company ever appears to be above a code of ethics

It's okay to have no ethics, as long as no one notices.

MS

[rice_burners_suck]

MS is always causing problems. How is it possible that a "small" company (in comparison to MS) like Apple is able to produce an incredible operating system and entire suites of applications for home, work, and pro, and it is incredibly stable, while MS, with significantly more resources and market share, and a more powerful position in the industry, cannot make something half as good?

Re:MS

[failure-man]

Apple a) gets a lot of code for free, b) has a small hardware set with tightly controlled drivers to support, and c) isn't afraid to break native API compatibility and shove users into a VM when they need to.