6311069
submission
theodp writes:
Microsoft's Open Value Subscription offering didn't get the warmest reception from Slashdot fans. Nor did the follow-up announcement of Albany, a planned MS-Office Subscription Service. Now comes word from the USPTO that Microsoft feels it deserves a patent for its 'invention' of 'Time-Based Licensing', which aims to make the traditional pay-once perpetual license model a thing of the past. Hey, if your customers were waiting nine years between OS upgrades, you'd try touting a three-year lease with a balloon buy-out payment, too!
5941921
submission
GameboyRMH writes:
Maximum PC reports that major MMO publishers (Blizzard, Turbine, SOE, NCSoft, and Jagex) are being sued by Paltalk, which holds a patent on "sharing data among many connected computers so that all users see the same digital environment" — a patent that would seem to apply to any multiplayer game played between multiple systems, at the very least. Paltalk has already received an out-of-court settlement from Microsoft earlier this year in relation to a lawsuit over the Halo games.
If Microsoft can't fend off Paltalk's legal attacks, the odds don't look good for their latest group of targets.
5939099
submission
coomaria writes:
So lawyers want to get juries to sign, on threat of prison, that they won't Google the case they are hearing. Apparently it could influence their decision, and only lawyers are allowed to do that, right?
