Microsoft News Tracker

Catching up on some news beclouded by the Thanksgiving holiday in the USA, Microsoft’s appeal of a patent lawsuit judgement against it delivered by an East Texas jury was rejected on Nov. 16 by a federal appeals court:

Microsoft Corp. must pay more than $140 million for infringing on software patents owned by a Michigan-based technology company, a federal appeals court has ruled.

Z4 Technologies Inc. sued Microsoft and Autodesk Inc., maker of drafting software, in 2004, claiming the technology they used to activate newly installed software and deter piracy infringed on patents created and owned by David Colvin, the owner of privately held z4.

Paul McDougall has more on the issues at InformationWeek and Susan Decker has more on the eastern Texas venue at Bloomberg News, but as these things go, it looks like a fair cop.

However, Microsoft had some solace on Nov. 15 from the spanking handed out to notorious patent troll Acacia Research Corp. in another East Texas courtroom:

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In August of this year when Microsoft settled the long running Eolas patent dispute, I speculated that this would mean the end of the two-step activation of ActiveX controls in Internet Explorer that Microsoft had implemented to avoid the Eolas patent. That speculation was borne out today when Microsoft announced that the two-step will soon be over.

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Todd Bishop reports that Microsoft has reached a settlement in the long running Eolas patent suit. No terms are being revealed, but Eolas shareholders are getting a dividend of between $60 and $72 per share according to a letter from the Eolas COO, Mark Swords. (No, you can’t work backwards since Eolas is privately held and the total number of shares is unknown.)

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Microsoft and Limelight Networks today announced an expanded working relationship centered around enhancing Microsoft Internet content delivery:

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A US Federal Court judge today reversed the whopping $1.5 billion judgement against Microsoft that a jury handed down in a Alcatel-Lucent patent lawsuit case last February:

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