03.19.10
Gemini version available ♊︎Microsoft Sued by VirnetX (Again) and Kodak Alleges That Microsoft’s Patent Troll Bullies Companies Along With Ray Niro
Summary: Intellectual Ventures is said to be attacking companies using its proxies and Microsoft suffers the wrath of the very practice it advocated with investments (patent trolling)
WITH some of its latest patent deals (e.g. Amazon [1, 2, 3]), Microsoft made it abundantly clear that it views racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] as an acceptable business model. No Microsoft executives have been arrested for it because we live in a society that typically jails the poor and glorifies the rich. It’s part of the indoctrination system. We are taught that large entities are immune to social responsibilities, whereas small ones can be viewed of “crooks”, “nutcases”, or “terrorists”. Both are harmful and there is room for infinite hypocrisy.
But anyway, Microsoft is quickly finding out that those small “terrorists” — the patent trolls — can cause a lot of damage. Shortly after losing the VirnetX case [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8], Microsoft gets sued by VirnetX again (this time triple damages for Vista 7). VirnetX is of course just a patent troll that contributes nothing to industry, whereas Microsoft is a marketing firm that contributes nothing to industry, except harm and monoculture.
“Usually Microsoft doesn’t develop products, we buy products.”
–Arno Edelmann, Microsoft’s European business security product manager
Here is some more coverage of Microsoft’s loss to VirnetX:
Microsoft has been ordered by a US federal jury in Texas to pay nearly $106m to VirnetX Holding Corporation for infringing two internet communication patents.
Microsoft’s booster Emil Protalinski says that Microsoft will appeal, as usual. It’s the same rollercoaster of exhaustion when it comes to i4i [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12].
“Microsoft is a patent troll or at least a backer of some; one could argue that Microsoft is a patent troll by association…”Based on the words of Microsoft's patent troll at Intellectual Ventures, this massive patent-trolling firm was created after discussions with Bill Gates; he created his own troll to ‘address’ the issue of patent trolls. In order to avoid the “troll” status, Gates and his friends established a model whereby there is reliance on a central hoarder of patents that lends patents to legal attack dogs. This business model has proven successful because some large companies paid "protection money" to Intellectual Ventures under NDAs. Intellectual Ventures has no less 1,000 firms connected to it; these firms are akin to armed mafia people who will go around shooting victims and their families under “mysterious circumstances” unless those victims pay money to the mafia Dons, namely Nathan Myhrvold, Bill Gates, and their ilk (they are financially connected and Gates is part of this vehicle that resembles pyramid schemes). Microsoft is a patent troll or at least a backer of some; one could argue that Microsoft is a patent troll by association and the following new article sheds light on the connection to the father of patent trolling, Ray Niro. We wrote about this connection before
“Kodak Says Intellectual Ventures Behind Patent Lawsuit Filed By Shell Company,” says TechDirt:
It seems that at least one company sued over such a patent is hitting back. Joe Mullin points us to the Legal Pad blog, which notes that Kodak, who has been sued for patent infringement by a shell company (PFI) being represented by Ray Niro (famous for, among other things, being the first person labeled a “patent troll,” as well as suing a bunch of companies he didn’t like with a bogus patent — finally rejected for good, recently — that he claimed covered any website that used a JPEG image), doesn’t believe that it’s really the shell company that’s behind this lawsuit. It’s demanding that Intellectual Ventures take part…
The original report asks, “Will Patent Holder IV [Intellectual Ventures] Show Its Face to Kodak?”
Kodak is trying to draw large patent hoarder Intellectual Ventures into court.
With its 30,000 patents and opaque veil of mystery, IV has shied away from the courts, likely because an allergy to discovery. But with its new money making scheme of selling patents to trolls who then file lawsuits (free reg. req.), you knew that IV would eventually end up in a courtroom.
Here are the basics on the Kodak case:
1. IV sold patent to shell company named Picture Frame Innovations.
2. Picture Frame, represented by Ray “the original patent troll” Niro, sued Kodak for patent infringement.
3. IV co-founder Peter Detkin told me last year that IV is now cutting deals where it sells patents and takes a cut of any money made by filing lawsuits (free reg. req.). So it seemed like IV might have struck such a deal with Picture Frame and Niro.
We wrote about Kodak and patents before [1, 2]. █
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