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Collection of news stories and case studies showing how the granting, licensing and litigation of patents is affecting players in the software field.
Patent Enforcement News Stories
International/Worldwide
- 2006-11-20 US [News.com: Wi-Fi standards face patent threathttp://news.com.com/2100-7351-6137372.html?tag=tb]
2006-07-13 EU Gamespot: Sony slapped with another patent suit
2006-03-22 US Minneapolis Business Journal: Digital River hit with patent suit
2006-02-06 US Slate: Weapons of business destruction (--> Blackberry)
2006-01-13 US Winewiki: Borland Patent SEH affects GCC
2005-12-19 US Security Focus: OpenSSH cutting edge ("The second reason is more of a killer: many ECC methods are patented")
2005-05-12 EU ZDNet: Wine development stifled by software patent
2005-05-12 US ITP: HP, EMC lawsuits come to an end
2005-05-06 US NetworkWorld: Suit against Cisco names products, damages
2005-04-13 US Alacritech ./ MS: Microsoft ordered to remove feature from Longhorn
2005-04-13 WW ZDNet UK: IBM patent sparks open source code rewrite
2005-04-11 WW PostgreSQL open source database reverts to inferior caching scheme due to software patent
2005-03-05 EU iTunes/iPod under threat from pending US/EU Patent
2005-02-15 US Red Herring: Yahoo filed software patent infringement suit against SME Xfire last week
2005-02-15 US Wirelessweek: Padcom vs. NetMotion
2005-02-04 JP FFII: Matsushita sues MSWord Competitor Off the Market
2005-01-06 WW Debian: MPEG encoders excluded from Linux distribution because of patent enforcement
2004-10-30 WW Linux-Kernel Mailinglist: Writing open source graphics drivers more and more difficult due to patents
Stories With References to European Patents
2005-06-29 US PR: Virgin Entertainment to License NeoMedia's PaperClick Technology (also granted in Europe)
2005-06-21 EU p2pnetwork: VideoLan under serious threat
2005-06-14 EU Forbes: EU confirms investigation into telecom standards body
2005-06-14 EU Forbes: EU Commission probes telecom standards body over 'patent ambush' fears
2005-06-12 US Inquirer: RIM, Nokia, world+dog sued over phone network patent (EP equivalent was also granted but has expired)
2005-05-24 EU Australian IT: Futures lawsuit
2005-05-04 EU FinExtra: Trading Technologies serves eight weeks notice on Refco end users
2005-04-18 EU ZDNet UK: Funds firm faces patent suit (-> TT vs EasyScreen)
2005-04-18 EU HTML Fix It: Software patent: 2.5 cent trade tax to Chicago software firm (-> TT vs EasyScreen)
2005-04-18 EU Out-Law.com: Trading software firm files patent suit (-> TT vs EasyScreen)
2005-04-15 UK FinExtra: Trading Technologies turns patent fire on Man Group (-> TT vs EasyScreen)
2005-04-13 WW FFII: KDE instant messenger Kopete on strike against patents on IM technology
2005-03-24 UK FinExtra: EasyScreen destabilised by software problems and patent uncertainties (-> EasyScreen)
2004-11-00 Digital Theater Systems uses EP864146 to threaten features out of Videolan Project
2004-08-25 US Microsoft Asserts Patent on Sender-ID Standard (--> Microsoft vs FLOSS, Standards)
2004-08-09 Google pays Yahoo for use of patent on serving ads linked to keywords (patent also granted in DE)
2004-08-04 UK/EU Apple obtains patent license from E-Data for downloading music and burning it to CDs in Europe; E-Data plans infringment litigation in UK (--> patent 20 of the webshop)
2004-07-28 US Intergraph cashes in on Parallel Instruction and Clipper System patents: Quarterly Report says they extracted 128 mn USD from Intel, 10 mn + 2% of yearly earning from AMD, are facing counter-suits from HP, some in Europe)
2004-07-04 UK/IT Godado.it sues small companies with web searching patent
2004-06-25 DE Teles launches litigation campaign against internet telephony companies
2004 UK Government in Court over Bromcom Pupil Data Managment Patent
2004-06-14 UK/US BTG sues Microsoft with broad downloading & antivirus update patents
(Possibly) US only
2005-12-28 US TMCnet: Padcom(R) Files Suit Against NetMotion Alleging Invalid and Unenforceable Patent
2005-12-15 US PC World: Visto Sues Microsoft Over Patents
2005-08-09 US SC Magazine: Fortinet ordered to stop selling antivirus in U.S.
2005-07-16 US Slashdot: Amazon Slaps Orbitz and Avis With Patent Lawsuit* 2005-07-15 US ComputerActive: PVR sellers sued for patent infringement (-> Forgent)
2005-07-15 US WhatPC: Microsoft settles Longhorn patent suit
2005-07-15 US TechWorld: Appeal court confirms Microsoft infringed AT&T patent
2005-06-21 US Blackenter: Enterasys Networks Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Foundry Networks and Extreme Networks
2005-06-21 US The Register: Apple sued over iTunes - again
2005-06-21 US Slashdot: Apple Sued Over iTunes UI
2005-06-21 US BusinessWire: Enterasys Networks Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Foundry Networks and Extreme Networks
2005-06-20 US MacDailyNews: Apple sued over iTunes software interface
2005-06-14 US Forbes: As Patent Deal Unravels, Anxiety Rises at BlackBerry Maker
2005-06-09 CA National Post: Research In Motion asks court to complete US$450M settlement with NTP (--> Blackberry
2005-06-07 US Boston Globe: A make-or-break court case (BCGI faces closure over patent on prepay phone billing software)
2005-06-06 US Reuters: Microsoft ordered to pay $8.9 mln in patent case
2005-05-12 US Market Watch: Findwhat.com stocks gained 33 cents after Yahoo patent infringement lawsuit failed
2005-05-12 US Clickz: Jury Fails to Determine Validity of Yahoo Ad Tech Patent
2005-05-12 US PR: Avistar Announces Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against TANDBERG (Videoconferencing Technologies)
2005-04-29 EU Computer Business Review: Symbol sues Intermec, again* 2005-04-14 US LA Times: 4 Firms Named in Net Security Patent Suit
2005-04-14 US The Inquirer: Legal smoke affects Microsoft Chimney, Longhorn
2004-04-13 US InternetNews.com: Microsoft Hit with Patent Injunction
2005-04-13 US Slashdot: Startup granted injunction against Microsoft
2005-03-24 US Intermec PR: Intermec Files Patent Infringement Claims Against Symbol
2005-03-12 US gameshout.com: Yahoo Countersued by Xfire
2005-03-12 IE Finfacts: Microsoft pays $60 million in patent-infringement claim
2005-03-12 US Register-Guard: Microsoft to pay $60 million in settlement with company
2005-03-13 US MS PR@I-newswire: MS and Burst.com settlement
2004-11-05 US EcommerceTimes: Amazon Embroiled in Another Patent Suit
2004-11-05 US The Register: Graphics patent holder sues Sony, MS, Nintendo (--> games)
2004-10-25 US DMReview: Expand Beyond Corp. Announces Second Wireless Patent
2004-10-21 US Strategiy: McAfee awarded patent for identifying malicious behavior in software
2004-10-21 US CXOtoday.com: McAfee Bags Patent For Malicious Code Detection
2004-10-04 US Sun loses against Kodak, must pay damages & royalties for use of Java
2004-09-03 US Amazon sued for patent infringement by its One-Click Method
2004-07-30 US Class Action against Nassada for concealing defeat in software copyright+patent litigation ("On June 14, 2004, Nassda revealed that the California state court had issued orders on June 11, against defendants in the Synopsys litigation which limited Nassda's defenses and established as fact that the first 60,000 lines of source code of Nassda's Hierarchial Storage and Isomorphic Matching ("HSIM") software product and all ideas and concepts reflected therein were derived from Synopsys' code or other Synopsys materials while the defendants were employed by Synopsys.")
2004-07-28 US Creative Labs pressures Id Software (Doom 3) with shadow calculation patent
2004-07-16 US Triangle Business Journal "Etrials hit with patent-infringement lawsuit"
2004-07-09 US Adobe sued over patent infringement in Acrobat
2003-02-20 Timeline charges huge royalties from Microsoft's SQL Server customers
Australia
2005-01-10 AU News.com.au: $4m e-health software trashed (the Pharmacy Guild of Australia claimed ownership of key aspects of the medication record sharing system using a patent)
Patent Granting News Stories
US
2005-06-21 US PharmaLive: invivodata Granted Patent on Patient Compliance System
2005-04-29 US DMNews: I-Behavior Gets Co-op Database Software Patent
2005-03-02 US BusinessWire PR: Symantec Granted Patent for Key Information Security Technology
2005-01-12 US SightSound Technologies file injunction on Napster
2004-07-21 US Slashdot: Microsoft patents "encouraging viewers to pay attention to television programs, commercials in particular" (--> US6766524, Microsoft)
2004-07-12 US Linux Weekly News: Oracle receives Patent on Content Management
An impossible compression patent (5,533,051): pretends you can compress any file by at least one bit
Elsewhere
2004-09-23 SG TMCnet: ESCOM Granted Singapore Patent for Spam Filtering Technology
2004-08-22 AE Khaleej Times: Network Associates gets Antispam-Patent
More lists of examples
General criticism
2005-04-12 EN IBM/Seebach: Naturally occurring standards, patents are a huge weakness for a standard. for instance, Unisys had a patent governing a bit of the algorithm used for GIF images. In general, patents are a huge weakness for a standard. The MP3 standard is used very widely by people who simply don't know -- or don't care -- that someone theoretically has a patent on part of it, and only some code using the patented algorithm actually has a license from the patent holder. Developers and users can be bitten by this many years after they make the design decision to use a patented algorithm, due to the nature of patents (see Resources). De jure standards often require contributors to clearly disclose any known patents; de facto standards generally have no way to do this.