

Microsoft sues Salesforce - rfrey
http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/05/microsoft_sues_salesforcecom_alleging_patent_infringement.html

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rfrey
Sues on violation of 9 patents.

1\. Method and system for mapping between logical data and physical data

2\. System and method for providing and displaying a web page having an
embedded menu

3\. Method and system for stacking toolbars in a computer display

4\. Automated web site creation using template driven generation of active
server page applications

5\. Aggregation of system settings into objects

6\. Timing and velocity control for displaying graphical information

7\. Timing and velocity control for displaying graphical information (later
patent)

8\. Method and system for identifying and obtaining computer software from a
remote computer

9\. System and method for controlling access to data entities in a computer
network

Sounds like they're being sued for deploying an AJAX application.

~~~
roc
I've come to terms with the fact that even here on HN, many people still
mistake a summary for a legal definition of the invention covered.

But I had held out hope that this wasn't the sort of place where one could
condemn patents by title alone, let alone the sort of place where a false
argument like that would find approval.

No point is bolstered by pretending the titles have any bearing on the legal
or philosophical validity of those patents.

If you have a philosophical issue with patents in general or software patents
in particular, just state that and save time.

~~~
rfrey
Nobody mistakes a title for a summary, or a summary for an exhaustive 40 page
patent.

Nobody mistakes an academic article title for an abstract, or the abstract for
the text, or the text for the data, either. But that doesn't stop us from
mentioning articles by title.

I thought it would be helpful to list the patents since they are not listed in
the original article and one has to scan a 10 page pdf to find them. I'm not
sure what you would prefer. Don't list the patents? Full text? Links to full
text? Please educate me on proper summarization of a patent lawsuit.

~~~
tzs
Actually, people do commonly mistake the title of a patent for the claims of
the patent. That's one of the main reasons discussions over specific patents
on sites like Slashdot, Reddit and...well, pretty much everywhere that
programmers hang out are almost always close to worthless.

Probably best to post the patent numbers along with the titles, which makes it
more likely some people will look at the patents themselves and subsequently
post more information as to what is or is not actually being alleged.

The best way to think of patent titles and abstracts is not as things telling
you what the patent covers, but rather as telling you what it DOESN'T cover.
When you are trying to figure out what patents might cover some particular
thing of interest, you use the titles and abstract to eliminate patents. For
those not eliminated, you then need to read the specification and claims.

For instance, looking at the 9 titles you posted, I can quite confidently
conclude that 7 of them cannot possibly cover anything I'm currently working
on.

------
awa
1\. Somehow I feel this is because MS is trying to push dynamics CRM more

2\. MS rarely sues over patent matters, usually they do cross licensing deals,
so maybe they tried that here (as clear from Salesforce jan filing) and that
didn't work out. I am sure Salesforce being quite a old player will have
patents MS might be interested in using/licensing.

3\. People criticizing the patents they are suing for, remember two latest
case that MS lost, one of them for basically saving a word file in xml format.
They lost millions and The judge actually ordered them to stop shipping Office
till they fix it. Based on that as a shareholder I would want them to go out
and make some money from their patent arsenal even if it involves suing.

------
stuntmouse
The future of the Microsoft tax.

~~~
papachito
Yeah, I could understand that if Microsoft was a dying company but last time I
check they are still making billions record profits. So why? Because
salesforce is doing integration with google apps?

~~~
rbanffy
They are a dying company. They just have too much inertia.

It will take a while. Desktop software will be irrelevant shortly, as will the
personal computer as we knew it. Companies will redeploy internal desktop apps
as web apps, first to their own servers, then for cloud platforms like GAE.

Microsoft is doomed. This is its future.

~~~
codexon
_Desktop software will be irrelevant shortly_

Desktop software will never become irrelevant.

I will continue to choose MS Word for the foreseeable future because the
documents are on my machine, and not on the web where it is vulnerable to MITM
attacks or the whim of Google employees and government agencies.

~~~
rbanffy
Never confuse "never" with "foreseeable future". I, too, won't give up my hard
drive for cloud storage for the foreseeable future. But I already did that for
e-mail and do a lot of collaboration through Google Documents. All the source
code I write is versioned on private servers that could, conceivably, be
called a "private cloud", albeit a very small one.

And, BTW, by being on your machine, they may not be vulnerable to government
agencies (unless you cross a border) and Google employees, but, as was shown a
couple weeks back, it's vulnerable to borked anti-virus updates.

Not to say the viruses themselves.

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AlexBlom
Really. Why is most of this even patentable? B.S.

------
thasmin
Microsoft says it only uses lawsuits as a last resort when a licensing
agreement can't be reached. It sounds like they're trying not to be bad guys,
but I read this as Microsoft using lawsuits to force companies to license
their patents. I'm not under the illusion that any other company does
differently, just commenting on their attempted PR spin.

~~~
nopassrecover
Seems like using a monopoly in one market to force another market into
submission.

------
jimfl
After thinking about this a little more, it seems like the complaint has to be
leveled against SF's Development Platform, since many of these techniques are
used in very many online services and applications. The language of the
complaint also suggests this:

 _The Defendant has been and/or is directly infringing the ... patent by,
among other things, making, using, offering to license or licensing in the
United States, offering to sell or selling in the United States, products
and/or services, including various web applications and services and the
hardware and software running these applications and services, that embody or
incorporate, or the operation of which otherwise practices, one or more claims
of the ... patent._

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rjsteinert
I call bullshit. This is a marketing and PR move to make their own CRM product
sound legit.

------
SoftwareMaven
Microsoft typically only uses their patent portfolio to counter the attacks of
others. It makes me wonder if Salesforce has some patents that Microsoft wants
so it is trying to force Salesforce to do a cross-licensing deal.

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DanielBMarkham
<sarcasm>Looks like the Microsoft PR machine is working in full force again
today</sarcasm>

Win a couple hundred million, lose the support of 5% of the voters. Nice
trade, guys. Few more like that and you'll be the next AT&T

We continue to confuse kinetic force with winning.

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bhiggins
Is it just me or are all these patents pretty trifling? Stacking toolbars, web
templates, mouse timing? Really Microsoft?

Did Marc Benioff say something mean to Horacio Gutiérrez?

Maybe they can team up with Intellectual Ventures and do some awesome
lawsuits.

When you can't win in the marketplace...

~~~
tzs
"Is it just me or are all these patents pretty trifling?"

I can't tell, as the story was only posted an hour ago, and I can't even
really understand one patent in an hour. It would take me days to be able to
competently assess 9 patents. I'm quite impressed that you were able to do so
in a mere one hour.

