It seems as if Microsoft will be spending a lot of its energy in court rooms no matter what it wants to do. At some point people will begin to feel sorry for the behemoth. But not yet. The following is a press notice sent to everyone in the media describing a situation unfolding with Microsoft and its portable phone. When you read coverage of Gates, the Microsoft phones and other articles keep this in mind.
On the off chance that you might be covering Bill Gates’ speech at the Consumer Electronics Show tonight, I wanted to make sure you were aware of a recent development that has the potential to significantly derail Microsoft’s plans in the mobile phone market. There are similarities to the RIM-NTP case.
Mr. Gates will likely tout the pending release of long-promised new products and suggest that Microsoft is poised for a successful new year. But his company is now facing a significant patent infringement lawsuit from Visto Corporation concerning its new Windows Mobile 5.0 product. The lawsuit, which seeks an injunction, has the potential to disable Microsoft’s ability to move into the mobile phone market as planned.
Visto has spent a decade developing technology for remote email and data access. Visto’s clients include many of the world’s largest mobile phone carriers like Cingular, Sprint-Nextel, the Vodafone Group, and many others. Headquartered in Redwood Shores, CA, Visto has over 300 employees spread across offices in ten countries. It is positioned to be an industry leader as the push email market matures. Visto has already successfully defended its patents in similar actions against other companies who have infringed on their intellectual property. Conversely, Microsoft has paid billions of dollars over the last two years to settle intellectual property lawsuits against such firms as Sun Microsystems, AT&T, InterTrust Technologies, Burst.com and others.
The facts in the Visto-Microsoft lawsuit are similar to those in the RIM-NTP case. The case also serves to highlight Microsoft’s unfortunate, well-documented past business practice of misusing the innovations of others and leveraging their size to drive competitors out of the markets they seek to enter and dominate.
This evening Mr. Gates will undoubtedly portray Microsoft as a growing company and a solid citizen. Unfortunately, neither is true. Even in its most profitable divisions, Microsoft has not experienced real growth in years. And over the last several years, they have been forced to settle billions of dollars in legal claims, either with competitors for misappropriating intellectual property or government prosecutors for illegal, anti-competitive behavior. Their attempt to misappropriate Visto’s intellectual property is more of the same. I hope you’ll include an appropriate reference to this case should you be writing this week about Mr. Gates’ speech or Microsoft’s aspiration in the mobile devices space.
For more information on Visto’s legal action against Microsoft, please visit www.visto.com. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to call or email.
Give me a break. Since when can you get a patent for writing software that uses POP and SMTP to get and send mail? How is this other company innovating there?
If I was Gates I would cash out, buy a large island and live in my own world the rest of my life. The man has to honestly believe he has something special to offer the world.
I’m sorry, but I can’t shed a tear for M$. They are nothing but a bunch of monopolistic scum bags and wouldn’t think twice about doing the same thing to someone else.
Live video stream from the upcoming Microsoft CES keynote: http://www.microsoft.com/events/executives/billgates.mspx
The man has nothing special to offer the world? The man donates billions of dollars to charity, surpassing donations from most countries, and plans to pledge the rest of his fortune to charity once he passes away. The man achieves more in a day than you will likely achieve in your entire lifetime. Yes, Micorsoft is full of “monopolistic scum bags ” that plays dirty, cheats, and lies, but common, what would you expect from a corporation? They’re in the business of doing business, making money, more money, and then more money. If governments are naturally corrupt, and yet require “your support” to vote them in, could you expect any less from a multi-billion dollar corporation which has a strangle hold over the OS market on the planet? (Don’t even mention Macs or Linux, 5-10% account for nothing) If President Bush can lie about WMD’s, resulting in tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of deaths, then stealing technology from another company seems like almost a petty if not worthless matter to complain about, especially if you don’t own shares in either.
…then stealing technology from another company seems like almost a petty if not worthless matter to complain about, especially if you don’t own shares in either.
Comment by tim
Sounds simple enough. The key word, however, is STEALING. That is not only illegal and frowned upon by society, but prisons are full of people that thought it ok to steal. The sad part of it is, the people hurt the most are the employees and owners of Visto Corporation.
And even then, to suggest because we don’t have a vested interest then we shouldn’t be concerned is a true piece of cop-out. If my neighbor down the street has his car stolen would you continue thinking I shouldn’t be concerned?
Peter Kafka from FORBES damned Gates’ keynote with faint praise. Typifying it as “incremental”.
He suggested upcoming peer events from Google, Yahoo and Apple would be more interesting.