Law.com: Free Speech Trumps Privacy as Comic Satires News, Judge Says http://goo.gl/mag/I0eQr
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Drunk on Licensing Fees and Patents, Microsoft Has Become a Joke
This article says it all, at least from a non-lawyer's perspective. From a lawyer's perspective, the complaint seems to be a little (a lot?) vague and doesn't really get at exactly how the patents are infringed, but that is said on the basis of not having yet read the complaint. Those three companies will now have to spend many millions of dollars defending themselves from a patent litigation which is by its own Assistant General Counsel's statement, a business maneuver to get Barnes & Noble, Foxconn and Inventec to the table to feed Microsoft some money. From what I have read, there have been ongoing negotiations but they broke down.
Ultimately, the companies named as defendants will end up settling this case for something only slightly more than they would have paid had they not bothered with the litigation in the first place. 98% of cases settle, so the likelihood is that this case will do likewise.
Patents permit a monopoly on certain technological processes and methods, but the quotations from the lawsuit as to how the technologies violate Microsoft's patents are surely far too broad, for the reasons stated by the writer in this article on Techcrunch.
What will this lawsuit cost Microsoft in terms of bad PR? Are they hurting their own business? I would love to have been a fly on the wall in the meeting in which it was decided to pursue this litigation. I'm not just poking fun - I mean it - there had to have been some serious consideration paid to the negative publicity that this lawsuit was going to engender as well as other business issues.
It will be interesting to follow this lawsuit on PACER.
Ultimately, the companies named as defendants will end up settling this case for something only slightly more than they would have paid had they not bothered with the litigation in the first place. 98% of cases settle, so the likelihood is that this case will do likewise.
Patents permit a monopoly on certain technological processes and methods, but the quotations from the lawsuit as to how the technologies violate Microsoft's patents are surely far too broad, for the reasons stated by the writer in this article on Techcrunch.
What will this lawsuit cost Microsoft in terms of bad PR? Are they hurting their own business? I would love to have been a fly on the wall in the meeting in which it was decided to pursue this litigation. I'm not just poking fun - I mean it - there had to have been some serious consideration paid to the negative publicity that this lawsuit was going to engender as well as other business issues.
It will be interesting to follow this lawsuit on PACER.
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