Victorious, VirnetX sues Microsoft, again

Just two days after a jury found that Microsoft had violated patents of small company VirnetX and fined the software giant $105.75 million USD, VirnetX has filed suit again, trying to get the jury to prove that more Microsoft products infringe on their patents, as well.

The jury had found that Windows XP, Vista and Office Communicator infringed the patents, but the suit was filed in 2008, so the new lawsuit now claims that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 also infringe on the patents.

"This is a tactical and procedural post-trial action to ensure and protect our property rights as we proceed to final resolution with Microsoft," says VirnetX CEO Kendall Larsen.

Microsoft has already vowed to appeal the first ruling, and challenged this latest suit as well. Says MSFT spokesperson Kevin Kutz (via AllThingsD): "Microsoft respects intellectual property, and we believe our products do not infringe the patents involved. Moreover, we believe those patents are invalid. We will challenge VirnetX?s claims."

The company has already asked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to re-examine the patents, and a preliminary review has already deemed most of VirnetX's claims as "invalid."

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 20 Mar 2010 2:49

ZippyDSM

Good, I hope they get acouple billion out of them....

Until lobbying is a hanging offense I choose anarchy!
Ah modern gaming its like modern film only the watering down of fiction and characters is replaced with shallow and watered down mechanics, gimmicks and shiny-er "people".
http://zippydsmlee.wordpress.com/

20.3.2010 10:14 #1

Gneiss1

It's interesting that so many patent applications can be examined, and patents awarded; then they can be re-examined and patents rescinded.

Though I know nothing of this action, I was consulting during Microsoft's brilliant growth, by methods that left even IBM with its mouth open.

In the 1980s, Microsoft would approach a 'Mom & Pop' company selling an augment (like a defragmenting program) for MS-DOG. "We just love your little augment to our 'operating system'. Give us the source code, and we'll make sure it runs even faster on our next version - and, it won't die, as WordPerfect will." Indeed that was true. The next version contained the little augment, it ran faster, and the 'Mom & Pop' company closed.

Microsoft now appears to have a gackle of patent attorneys better than our government's. Microsoft's earlier methods leave me wondering whether the patents reviewed as 'invalid' are invalid because the ideas were not original, or invalid for some other reason.

20.3.2010 20:02 #2

KillerBug

When you think of all the different stolen softwares that go into a windows release, it is amazing that Vista was so reliable...downright incredible that Win7 is even more reliable.

Remember, when windows crashes, it isn't microsoft's fault...they didn't write it!

22.3.2010 07:15 #3

Gneiss1

Well, I think that might be going a little far. Given that the size of a GNU/Linux is roughly 2 GB, and the size of the equivalent Windows 7 is 20 GB, Microsoft appears to have taken lots of room for its own code.

One example would be their streaming AVI container with DRM. You know, the 18-year old format without shape or ability to vary the bit-rate sampling -- the one that plays all those streaming movies from NetFlix that's I've bought for two years but can't play because I'm being penealized for not buying a newer Microsoft operating system.

Another might be Microsoft Network's firewall -- though this could be FreeBSD's, I suppose: the one that prevented me from getting a digital signature for an attorney because thawte.com, a subsidiary of VeriSign, was blacklisted on MSN.

Wait ... I do know of one. Win3.1's process scheduler! When hundreds of papers had been published refining Unix's scheduler, Microsoft's gave half the clock ticks to a DOG program, dividing the rest among the 3.1 user applications. They had to have written that.

In the early 90s, there were some nice applications that originated with Microsoft. However, after OS/2 Warp died, I switched to GNU/Linux & MacOSX. So, I confess ignorance; but those 18 GB must contain something.

Though I understood Microsoft, which will be the only operating system if *ix is eliminated for being insideous, cannot build hardware, it seems to control many hardware companies: those that prevent their hardware from ever working with Linux.

Before buying a USB flash drive, to boot a repair operating system from, I checked the speeds and read all the technical specs on SanDisk's web site. Upon receiving it, I found a read-only partition had eaten the MBR, and the USB had been secretly modified from the standard to prevent my removing it with anything but a Microsoft operating system (later MacOSX was added). It was interesting the 'U3' partition would have installed, without permission, adware on a MS computer identical to the adware servers that I thought MS had removed from Vista and the MS web browser. Nevertheless, I used an already compromised Mac to remove it; but that left it far too slow to use.

So, I wish to amend my previous post. Microsoft has been writing some very, very creative software. :-) (This is my last post on this news article about MS taking over other's patents.)

22.3.2010 14:56 #4

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