Microsoft Loses $290 Million in Patent Battle Fail

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alyon

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I remember hearing about i4i or better known as "Eye for an Eye." Just a group that makes all of their business buying up patents and then suing companies who may infringe. I would much rather have Microsoft winning this instead of the people who represent what is so wrong with our copyright/patent system today.

Idiots will look at this as a win.
 
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i4i is a patent troll, microsoft losing that case is bad for the industry in general.
 

Firehead2k

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i4i are not patent trolls. From what I can recall, they are a small company that deals with the automated conversion of text into computers.

It's their patent, and microsoft knowingly infringed on it. And now justice is served.
 

SmileyTPB1

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While I love it when people stick it to MS, I too agree this is a bad thing. I'm tired of lawyers who's only business is to sue people to make money for themselves. Anyone remember the group of lawyers who bought up a bunch of patents that they vaguely interpreted as giving them the patent on buying stuff on the internet and then started suing small businesses to buy a $3000 "Internet Commerce" license from them? Thankfully those morons were successfully counter sued when several of the small business banded together and put them out of business.
 

reggieray

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Nice to see the copycat company MS not get away with another stealing of an idea. They copied Apple in the beginning after Bill shafted the author of MS DOS and shoved him under the bus. MS then bullied, copied, stole, you name it to get where they are and people wonder why I dislike the convicted monopolist. Their OS is not that great anyway, bloated and clumsy compared to Gnome on Linux or OS X. The only thing I see MS with an advantage is games but that is all about shoving their proprietary Direct X down everyones throats and that is quickly changing too. OS X is on STEAM now and I hear there is talk of Ubuntu on STEAM.
Not to mention that the tablet and phone games do not use the proprietary DX crap either.
 

stalker7d7

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The current patent system is a load of crap in my honest opinion.

Competition allows us to innovate further. Not "I got the patent, you can't do shit" type of crap. The space race for example, we got the the moon because of competition (regardless that it was a competition for the top power in the world).

So many good things come from competition, that's why there are laws against monopoly. Yet, for some reason, we have a patent system that seems to strive solely for monopoly? I don't get it.

Intel vs AMD
nVidia vs AMt(used to be ATI...)
Pepsi vs Coke

Competetion.

Without it we'd still be in the stone ages...

I say, abolish the patent system until revisions are made to make it...sensible.
 

fyend

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[citation][nom]ReggieRay[/nom] Steam is on OS X now and the handful of games available run at much lower frame rates than they do on windows so you might as well just run Windows via Bootcamp if you're dumb enough to overpay for a Mac and expect to game on it. Mind you it'll still be a let down since Mac doesn't offer cutting edge GPUs.[/citation]

Fixed.
 

neblix

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[citation][nom]ReggieRay[/nom]OS X is on STEAM now and I hear there is talk of Ubuntu on STEAM.[/citation]


I can buy OSX on Steam now?! When did that happen?!!!?!?
 

K-zon

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Patents are always in debate and argument. Think their purpose is to find ways to help reduce or better manage that of debate or arguments within innovation and design to say. But of it at least is the fact that everyone doesnt make the samething and of it that on the idea of anything right maybe for there to be a way to ensure that; that's what it is. Techincal and "legally". Even though patents i think can be applied without great detail due to the fact of being able to access the info, but again maybe not as well. But even on info detail, is the issue of detail flips, to say rather that is of "innovative" means is probably far and in between. To get the same or different results differently.
 

Kamab

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What a bad decision. How can you patent something so vague as the way you edit text documents with structured XML. As much as MS is a bloate company they really do get screwed a lot. All because MS did not want to do business with a company that had nothing to offer them.
 

zybch

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[citation][nom]ReggieRay[/nom]Nice to see the copycat company MS not get away with another stealing of an idea. They copied Apple in the beginning after Bill shafted the author of MS DOS and shoved him under the bus. MS then bullied, copied, stole, you name it to get where they are.[/citation]
Your recollection of history is sadly lacking.
Just go watch Triumph of the Nerds, it might help you get your scrambled memory correctly organized.
 

ikyung

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Oh man.. I thought that man's shirt was a design of spots till I realized it was sweat.. What is the point of making millions when one can't even take care of their health. GO EXERCISE.
 

falchard

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I find Microsofts desire to change patent cases to be refreshing. It is a good American stance where the plantiff has to argue the validity of the case instead of the defendant disproving guilt.
 

therabiddeer

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I decided to look up i4i, and apparently they are now selling a library that allows you to use the XML that they took out for Word 2007/2010. So, basically what MS already had and was forced to remove is put back in if you pay another company for it. What a bunch of scumbags those i4i people are...
 

ta152h

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I also enjoy watching a parasitic, degenerate, and incompetent company like Microsoft pay a lot of money to a small company, since they've destroyed a lot of small companies by their illegal activities. But, the patent system is important even than extracting revenge against an ugly monopoly.

Without knowing the actual law, the comments here are probably based on conjecture, but the key point of patents is they should promote innovation, not impede it. It's not clear in many of these cases that it's doing that.

Also, Rambus does make useful technology, and has been used in computers, and is used in the PS/3. Of course their incessant litigation sometimes buries that fact.
 

pocketdrummer

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[citation][nom]ReggieRay[/nom]Nice to see the copycat company MS not get away with another stealing of an idea. They copied Apple in the beginning after Bill shafted the author of MS DOS and shoved him under the bus. MS then bullied, copied, stole, you name it to get where they are and people wonder why I dislike the convicted monopolist. Their OS is not that great anyway, bloated and clumsy compared to Gnome on Linux or OS X. The only thing I see MS with an advantage is games but that is all about shoving their proprietary Direct X down everyones throats and that is quickly changing too. OS X is on STEAM now and I hear there is talk of Ubuntu on STEAM.Not to mention that the tablet and phone games do not use the proprietary DX crap either.[/citation]

Oh shut the hell up already. How does "this guy" always make it into legit conversations? Just because there's a little following for both Apple and Linux, it doesn't make those systems better. Hell, OS X is just as bloated as Win 7 except I don't need to get into the console to disable junk I don't need in Win 7. Not to mention, if Linux was so superior, I wouldn't have to crawl through the net trying to figure out why my wireless card stopped working in Fedora 15. As far as games are concerned, they don't run as well on OS X. They've done benchmarks and I've tested it out myself. You lose 10+fps just by using that OS. And it's EXTREMELY unlikely that A+ games will come to Linux via Steam.

People just need to use whatever works for them and stop this immature bickering.

Get over yourself and tell the other mindless ranting morons to do the same.
 

pocketdrummer

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Anyway, on to more relevant matters...

I've never even heard of i4i before in my life. Like others have said, it appears to be another "Rambus" situation. It's very obvious that the current patent system is seriously flawed if a company can just sit on an idea or a product and wait for another company to do the legwork before suing them for a bit of delayed gratification.
 

bit_user

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[citation][nom]otacon72[/nom]What products do you own from i4i? Exactly..[/citation]Oh, come on. Obviously, not every company deals with end consumers. And that doesn't make their claims any more or less valid.

When I first heard of this case, years ago, I assumed I4I was only seeing dollar signs. But then I read about how MS went after their market in a very focused and predatory way. I'm not sure exactly where the truth lies, but I do believe that the US patent system is badly broken. Whether or not this was a valid case, hopefully MS will get on board with fixing it.
 
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