'Justifiably' Proud [LWN.net]

'Justifiably' Proud

Posted Aug 12, 2009 14:02 UTC (Wed) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281)
Parent article: Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US

From their perspective, I can certainly understand the pride. They now own one of the most valuable legal weapons on the planet: A patent that can shut down Microsoft's Office business. The patent is now literally worth however much Office is worth to Microsoft. This is basically a hostage/ransom situation.

Of course Microsoft has the resources to fight this endlessly in the courts - the usual tactic against patent trolls, to make it not worth their while. But to do so while not being able to sell Office isn't an option. All I can see happening here is either Microsoft somehow manages to win an appeal in the next 60 days, or the owners of this patent become immensely, ridiculously wealthy on day 60.

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'Justifiably' Proud

Posted Aug 12, 2009 14:37 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (13 responses)

That was already the appeal, so MS is pretty short of legal options. Working around the patent is one possibility, if that doesn't cause compatibility problems.

I'm not sure what the right analogy is. I thought first that i4i won the patent lottery, but no bystanders get hurt or put at risk in a lottery.

(On swpat.org, I'm documenting i4i v. Microsoft and Microsoft's lost cases)

'Justifiably' Proud

Posted Aug 12, 2009 15:09 UTC (Wed) by dwmw2 (subscriber, #2063) [Link]

"That was already the appeal, so MS is pretty short of legal options. Working around the patent is one possibility, if that doesn't cause compatibility problems."

Is it not possible to bring a private criminal prosecution in that country? It seems like this is quite a simple case of fraud, and criminal proceedings should be brought against those responsible. As individuals.

Fraud: Act or course of deception, an intentional concealment, omission, or perversion of truth, to (1) gain unlawful or unfair advantage, (2) induce another to part with some valuable item or surrender a legal right, or (3) inflict injury in some manner.

'Justifiably' Proud

Posted Aug 12, 2009 15:13 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (7 responses)

As far as i4i goes they did win. They are going to be very wealthy people because of this.

Everybody else gets f*k'd though. Thanks Congress, Judicial folks, and the Patent Office! Our government at work.

'Justifiably' Proud

Posted Aug 12, 2009 16:31 UTC (Wed) by Doogie (guest, #59626) [Link] (6 responses)

Microsoft has also benefited from these same inane patent laws and has done little or nothing to rectify the situation. So I find it hard to have any sympathy for them, or to lay the blame entirely upon the big bad government. Someone had to vote for the people who enacted these laws and someone else had lobby for them.

'Justifiably' Proud

Posted Aug 12, 2009 22:04 UTC (Wed) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link] (5 responses)

Actually, why not blame the government? Who cares how many people and who voted for it? Does voting suddenly justify bad law? There is no rational argument that says that if X number of people get together and commit crimes that they are not still crimes.

'Justifiably' Proud

Posted Aug 12, 2009 22:38 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

This sort of situation is why I am a big fan of limited government.

If you put the government in charge of businesses and whatnot then that leads to corruption. Just because people are inherently corruptable, and government is nothing but a bunch of people. You give businesses a _reason_ to send lobbyists and try to spend money, time, and effort to manipulate the government... then that is just what they'll do. It's human nature.

Take away the task of government to control busines they you eliminate the corrupting influence of business on goverment. It's a very simple mechanism.

Of course you can't eliminate the controls. So you have to keep them as minimal as possible. Keep the controls as minimal as possible and you minimize the risk and negative effects.

That then hopefully puts the risk into the 'managable risk' catagory. That is it's small enough that people can do stuff about it before it gets out of hand.

-----------------------

In this case it's a problem of inactivity and inflexibility of government.

The patent laws existed prior to software, yet somehow they were able to apply to software. The Courts say this is legal, mostly, and it's up to Congress to actually do something about it.

Which they haven't done anything.

*shrug*

---------------------------

It's a tough situation and certainly Microsoft has a portion of the blame.

They should be petitioning the government to help reform software patent law, but instead they are protecting it for their own gain, even though it's literally costing them multi-million dollars every single year.

Yes, they are MORONS and probably deserve it. But it doesn't mean I like seeing patent trolling or companies being victomized by the system.

As a 'collective' (or whatever) we should be pointing at them and saying "For f*k sakes, why are you not helping us help you?" rather then pointing fingers and laughing.

'Justifiably' Proud

Posted Aug 13, 2009 6:28 UTC (Thu) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

The problem with this is that businesses are groups of people too. Minimal controls on business means business will do whatever they want. Clearly, the only solution is to get rid of humanity!

'Justifiably' Proud

Posted Aug 14, 2009 2:09 UTC (Fri) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

So it's a problem of government sitting on their hands, and the best way to rectify that problem is to cut off government's arms.

Yep. That makes sense.

'Justifiably' Proud

Posted Aug 13, 2009 15:15 UTC (Thu) by Doogie (guest, #59626) [Link] (1 responses)

Blaming the "government" is easy and feels good, but is completely pointless. Where is the rationality in voting for people who claim to hate the government and then expecting them to do a good job running it? The idea of "drowning the government" is a naive view of how the world works. We saw much the same kind of irrational adherence to an unrealistic ideology in the soviet union and it led them nowhere.

'Justifiably' Proud

Posted Aug 13, 2009 16:11 UTC (Thu) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]

'Blaming the "government" is easy and feels good, but is completely pointless.'

You may feel so, however it is not a simple fact. Placing the blame in the right spot, large powerful institutions backed by force does not seem pointless to me. Blaming those who manipulate and take advantage of a large "legitimate" corruption tool seems silly since you provide them with the tool and label the tool legitimate in the first place. You effectively create an environment where any behavior sanctioned by your institution is legitimate, you have no standing to blame the abusers unless you yourself never use the institution to ever abuse anyone else with it. Let's call a spade a spade, and stop labeling the tool legitimate since there are very few legitimate uses of the tool (the only really legitimate uses of it are those which undermine it).

Point out that the emperor has no clothes. Just because many people pick an institution and label it legitimate does not mean it is actually any more legitimate than the mafia, especially if they use similar tactics. One just happens to be much larger and more powerful and therefore able to rule over more people and collect a lot more "protection money" while waging much larger turf wars.

If there is the possibility that one extra person is willing to attempt to rationalize (instead of blindly accepting) the difference between the two institutions, does not seem pointless to me. In fact, it would be a real step towards changing the world, a step which is likely to have much more influence than any vote in any institution that I could vote in.

'Justifiably' Proud

Posted Aug 12, 2009 17:30 UTC (Wed) by jejb (subscriber, #6654) [Link] (3 responses)

> On swpat.org, I'm documenting i4i v. Microsoft and Microsoft's lost cases)

Actually, there is cause for hope in the Injunction. There's a line that says:

"This injunction does not apply to any of the above actions wherein any of the infringing and future word products, upon opening an XML file, applies a custom transformation that removes all custom XML elements"

This implies the infringement was something to do with the way the Microsoft files use custom XML elements. These were a main bone of contention in the ISO approval process and more significantly, ODF doesn't use custom XML extensions, so it might not infringe the patent.

Obviously, someone would need to read the trial transcript to assure us that this is indeed the point of infringement.

where's the trial transcript

Posted Aug 12, 2009 18:17 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (2 responses)

Any idea where or when one might find a copy of the trial transcript?

where's the trial transcript

Posted Aug 12, 2009 21:00 UTC (Wed) by jejb (subscriber, #6654) [Link] (1 responses)

It looks like it's available through pacer:

http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-txedce/case_no-6:2...

But you'd need an account on the system just to find out. Justitia has no documents on it, just the pacer references.

where's the trial transcript

Posted Aug 14, 2009 21:22 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

I'm sure people have noticed, but check on GrokLaw. The current top story is this one, and I think there's a transcript of the judgement.

Cheers,
Wol