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RE: Interesting...
By Fritzr on 8/21/2009 5:44:43 AM , Rating: 4
Do a little research before spouting off. i4i is a real company, they have real products and a real patent that was issued to them for a concept they use in their own product.

If you had even read this article and nothing else you would have noticed that Microsoft discussed this patent with i4i BEFORE infringing on it and also that the court felt that Microsoft was attempting to use their financial might to bury a smaller company that failed to settle for Microsoft's offer.

Microsoft had 3 choices
1) License the patent
2) Not use the method described in the patent
3) Infringe the patent and hope i4i could not afford the cost of taking Microsoft to court

Microsoft chose #3 and lost the bet.

RE: Interesting...
By Samus on 8/21/2009 10:35:34 AM , Rating: 5
I'm affraid your confused with RIM v NTP, where a patent was previously discussed and RIM lost.

Because even though i4i attempted to license the patent to Microsoft, they didn't disclose specifically what part of XML Microsoft was infringing and therefor didn't take the threat seriously. I don't have the IP documentation in front of me, nor does anybody here, but if you know anything about computer languages, I would have done the same thing Microsoft did and blew them off. You can't logically patent a feature on top of an open source language. Only a dumbass judge and jury would grant such a ridiculous judgement.

Ohh, and please, do tell us what products i4i has developed. Because if you check out their portfolio, they basically make nothing but a bunch of crappy XML software that guessed it, Microsoft software to run. Word, mostly. So I don't see how Microsoft halting shipments of Office is going to help i4i. But i4i doesn't care about selling their XML software anymore, because they're being awarded $290 million, more than they'll ever be worth.

