|
Microsoft sued for patent infringement 4,000 times in one day - 2/25/07
Time to milk the cash cow for all it's worth.
|
|
This week, a federal jury ordered Microsoft to pay $1.5 billion to Alcatel-Lucent for infringing patents related to the MP3 format. The judgment sets a new record as one of the highest awards of all time, but more importantly, it shows the world that Microsoft (once thought untouchable even by the US Department of Justice) can actually be sued for stealing other people's ideas. Within hours of the ruling, lawsuits began pouring in from all over the world.
"The interface, the browser, the media player... it's impossible to know how much they've stolen," said lawyer Dan Kaspersky. "We're estimating that Windows Vista probably infringes on half a million patents."
Former Microsoft employee Quentin Finch told us, "I worked in R&D for over a decade, and the only tool we ever used was Google Search. When I expressed concern about lawsuits to my superiors, I was told that Microsoft products should be considered parodies, and legal under fair use doctrine."
Apple CEO Timothy D. Cook claims that Microsoft has been ripping them off since 1985 just by having a graphical interface. (Steve Jobs was not available for comment as he recently went insane.)
"The judgment back in '94 forced them to buy half our crappy stock," Cook said. "Unfortunately, it turned out to be the best investment they ever made. Since then, they've gotten even worse. Putting the OS on a CD? 16 bit color? Times New Roman? Those were all Apple innovations."
Microsoft Senior Exec Morton Smalley said, "We're not exactly sure why they paid us money for infringing on their patents, but we've been trying for years to get them to sue us again."
Cook told us the fight doesn't end with Microsoft. "If you have a title bar and a file menu, you're going down. I'm talking to YOU, Ubuntu. I hope all you open-source nut jobs can afford lawyers."
Other companies filing lawsuits include Netscape, Real Networks, Sony, Symantec, Corel, Adobe, Google, Sun Microsystems, and one woman in Nebraska who claims Microsoft stole her false teeth.
"It was that Steve Ballmer," she said. "He's pure evil, sure as the world."
Microsoft has failed to respond to any of the 4,000 lawsuits, but has announced that they are working on a response, and remain on target for their projected release date in Q3 2012. A beta version of the response will be available online to the MSDN community starting January 2009.
|
|
Written By: inanis
Date Posted: 2/25/2007
Number of Views: 530
Return
|
|