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Microsoft Settles $90m Lawsuit
Microsoft has settled a $90 million lawsuit that accused the company of infringing on patents related to Halo and both Xbox consoles.
The plaintiff, PalTalk Holdings did not reveal the terms of the agreement, but a the firm's lawyer said, "The parties have settled the case, and PalTalk is quite pleased with the outcome."
A Microsoft spokesperson said it was an "amicable agreement."
The trial between the two companies began days ago before the settlement ended the proceedings. PalTalk had said it acquired two patents from MPath Interactive, and accused Microsoft of infringing on those patents, demanding a large sum of royalties.
The patents pertained to a "server-group messaging system for interactive applications" and "emptying packed data state during execution of packed data instructions."
Prior to the settlement, Microsoft lawyer David Pritikin said, "The patents aren't worth much. Certainly not $90 million."
Source: Seattle P-I
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Interesting. Of course, given how screwed up the patent system is, plus how technologically illiterate some courts are? I can't say I blame them. They could be 100% in the right, but still lose, after all.
@manhattan
You just described the exact reason why the computer industry is advanced as it is today. And don't forget the Open Source movement - they're the best for looking at things and absorbing what they think is "best of." I'm glad they do!
The patent system is faulty, I agree. But what I'm talking about is Microsoft's penchant for plagiarism and its lack of foresight and it's reactionary stance on almost everything they do. Windows, itself, the very reason Microsoft is a billion dollar company now, continues to take its cues from the innovations of other rival operating systems, like the Mac OS. The spectacular failure that is the Zune took its click wheel design from Apple's ipod (which, despite the over-crowded patent system, manages to come up with original ideas, year after year). The tacked-on X-box HD-DVD tried to catch-up with PS3'S built-in Blu-ray but died along with the HD-DVD format. Also, Google's ascent to the top shocked MS so suddenly that they thought the best thing to do (since they are clueless as to how to make a very good search engine) is to buy Yahoo. And of course Yahoo wasn't willing just to hand over to Microsoft years of hardwork and original ideas. And just to make a decent gaming mouse, they had to enlist the help of Razer. I'm curious to know what MS will do about the billion-dollar handheld console market, now that Nintendo and Sony has firmly established themselves--and Apple is just about ready to capture a substantial slice of it with the Iphone and ipod touch. Who will MS buy--when no one's selling?
Love sweeping generalisations much?
As for your particular examples, well, you don't really know the facts behind the decisions on Zune, HD-DVD or Windows for that matter. And neither do I. All we have is speculation and guess-work.
As for the Ipod, don't get me started on the over-marketed, under-par piece of crap that people are swallowing because they saw a cool ad. Not to mention the unmitigated disaster that is I-tunes.
Cool down and generalize these:
ZUNE:
Market research NPD Group pegs Zune's market share in a late 2008 study at a measly 4%. Apple's iPod is the giant, of course, with 71% of the market. However, all of Microsoft's might hasn't even been enough to knock off silver medalist SanDisk and its 11% slice.
HD-DVD:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/02/microsoft-officially-announce...
WINDOWS 7:
http://babygotmac.com/a/10-ways-windows-7-imitates-osx/
WINDOWS VISTA:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mac-OS-Crushes-Vista-in-OS-Deathmatch-519...
ITUNES:
Pulse2 article by Amit Chowdry, June 2008
"Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has announced today that they have sold over 5 billion songs on iTunes. This even tops the amount of music that Wal-Mart has sold in all of their stores. Currently iTunes has over 8 million songs in their library. iTunes users are even renting/buying 50,000 movies per day."
Qouting dubious websites is not going help, mate. You've missed the point. I was going to go on but the posters below have covered what I was going to say.
As for the Ipod, compared to the MP3 players you can get out there it is not the best. Good advertising has made Ipod more successful than other player which boast better features, not least of all the most important feature - quality of sound. Off the top of my head, CreativeZEN series.
As for ITunes, again you miss the point, calm down. It is a disaster in usability, archaic copy protection, unintuitive and badly designed - I was not questioning its popularity. The reason for my earlier rant was that most people don't know any better. Some don't even realise there are alternatives to the IPod.
Your irrational hatred of all things MS rears its ugly head again, Manhattan. Virtually every product "borrows" from what came before - change comes in an evolutionary fashion far more often than revolutionary. Sony, Apple, Nintendo, etc. are all "guilty" of precisely the same thing. What is the iPod but the evolutionary descendant of Sony's Walkman? Citing an article from"babygotmac" is not exactly looking at an objective source.
Considering MS has completely dominated the OS market since its inception with over 90% market share, it's interesting that you think they've stolen everything from competitors, when there really wasn't any serious competition to steal from. In the past you've bashed MS for stifling innovation by dominating the market and now you hypocritically bash them for stealing innovations from this nonexistent competition. For all it's significant faults, there's a very good reason MS dominates the OS market - because it's the best available. If there was anything better out there people would have switched by now (and please don't spout any Mac nonsense - you can't even seriously play games on that OS). There's absolutely nothing stopping competitors from trying to come up with something better - and several have tried and failed because they couldn't do better. Creating a global OS that works on every computer on the planet with the limitless number of possible hardware and software configurations isn't very easy.
Yes, the first version of Windows clearly drew inspiration from Mac's GUI, but Apple has also borrowed liberally from MS' playbook in the years since.
Yes Microsoft have liberally borrowed from other people, but who hasn't?
Macintosh / Apple OS was in part licenced from Xerox/Parc, Sony and Nintendo have also faced lawsuits about rumble technology.
Technology relies on stealing and licencing technology, Otherwise we'd all still be using Intel 8080 processors running Dos
It's hard to come up with new things now, as just about everything has been done. Everything is copyrighted and it's just not cool. It's gotta be done though.
Just goes to show Microsoft can't create anything original on their own, either they buy it, imitate it, or swipe it.
fyi, I've taken a patent out pertaining to "everything ever created for the purposes of anything and everything". My lawyers will be in touch with you all.
"PalTalk is quite pleased with the outcome"
I'll bet.