Microsoft claims Outlook date picker not nicked
Appealing jury verdict
Wednesday, 3 June 2009, 10:45
MICROSOFT HAS TOLD an appeals court that its Outlook calendar date-picker tool did not infringe an Alcatel-Lucent patent, in a desperate bid to have a $358 million jury verdict overturned.
Reuters reports that the Vole and Alcatel-Lucent settled other patent fights in December and this was the last bone of contention.
Microsoft argued that the patent, which allows users to click on a date to open it rather than typing it in, was invalid because it was merely an obvious extension of the earlier technology.
The patent office has since declared the patent invalid although Alcatel is having a word with the patent examiners and said it will appeal that ruling. µ
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What a ridiculous patent, and how does it warrant $358 million? Is its functionality so damn vital?
It pays to be a lawyer with absurd laws and patents like these.
I wonder how long it will be before noone makes anything useful from the fear of being sued. I remember that in the constitution is says somehing along the lines of "patents are for encouraging innovation". Well that is the exact opposite of what they are doing now. Brilliant.
At least countries who ignore Imaginary Property and stupid patent laws (russia, china, etc.) get shit done properly while the west is happy to sue itself into oblivion.
This is kharma in action. Micro$oft has a load of non-sensical patents, many of which are "obvious extensions," that they use to push their weight around with competitors. For example, they sued over the use of the FAT file system in linux not long ago and they didn't even invent it when it was first used more than twenty years ago. Talk about obvious extensions. Nearly every file system in existence is one obvious extension after another.
As far as I am concerned, if they want to live by asserting ridiculous patents then they can "die" by them too although $358M is nothing near death for micro$oft. That's more like a week or two of profit for them.
....neckbeards and 14 year old boys...:)
@Gomez,
Microsoft owns the IP fo FAT (at least I think no one disputes it). FAT itself is not a concept but an actual aplication (if nothing else in algorithm way). Now if the MS patent was one of sector based file systems, yes it would be rather stupid. Main thing against FAT patent is that MS treated it as Public Domain - never ascertained the ownership for a long time, hence becoming pervarsive. Given the long time of the patent in terms of software and the non protection of hte patent, I would rule for a non exclusive use ruling. Something that MS would not like but it wouldn' hurt them much.
But the case at hand is completely different - stupidity at its best. But people are pointing out laws and patent office (always understaffed :P), while one big culprit here is the Judge or - most likely - the juri that pronounced such a stupid ruling.
Ideas should not be patenteable, and software IP/patents should have a much shorter lifespan than, lets say, medical drugs.
Patents should be scrapped. They are just used now as weapons in the fight for market domination, which never benefits the consumer.
Let the best product win, not the first product.
Outlook has a few failings in regular use.
Here is one - I have to press Alt+K to add every email address to my address book. It should do this automatically, it used to, but this functionality got removed. FFS.