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Das vl.
Vl. kennt ihr das:
Watching Microsoft be sued - by the federal government, states, class-action
plaintiffs and aggrieved rivals - has become a common pastime in the computer
industry. The enjoyment of the industry spectators is usually all the greater
if the world's largest software company loses, and loses big, in court.
Last month, Microsoft suffered a stinging setback in a patent-infringement
case when a federal jury awarded $521 million to a former University of
California researcher. But this time, the rest of the industry is not
smiling.
To comply with the court ruling, Microsoft has informed a handful of software
companies and the World Wide Web Consortium, the leading Web standards
organization, that soon it will probably make changes in its Internet
browser, the on-ramp to the Web for 90 percent of computer users. The impact,
according to industry executives and Web experts, could be disruptive and
costly for other Internet software companies and big commercial Web sites.
``The ripple effect of this could be very dramatic,'' said Daniel Weitzner,
director of technology and society activities at the Web consortium. ``What
you have here is the adjudication of a private lawsuit between two companies,
and no one thought about the rest of the Web.''
The technology in question enables a browser to summon programs automatically
over the Internet. The programs that use this technology include those for
playing music, videos and animations and exchanging documents over the
Internet. The technology was not only used by Microsoft in its Internet
Explorer browsing software, but has become a standard feature in the software
for coding Web pages, called hypertext markup language, that has been
ratified by the Web consortium.
The court ruling and its potential impact, according to Mr. Weitzner, points
to the larger issue of the need to keep the basic software of the Web free of
patent royalties.
The consortium, which includes representatives from the major software
companies and many university researchers, adopted a royalty-free patent
policy in May after three years of debate. ``If you try to charge individual
companies for patents on Web standards, you risk balkanizing the Web and
breaking it,'' Mr. Weitzner said.
Indeed, Microsoft and I.B.M.coei are expected to emphasize their commitment
to the royalty-free patent approach to certain security and transaction
software for Web services, an emerging beyond-the-browser technology that
supports machine-to-machine communication over the Internet. The two
companies, which are often rivals, are demonstrating their cooperation on Web
services at an event today in New York where Bill Gates, the Microsoft
chairman, and Steven Mills, a senior vice president in charge of I.B.M.'s
software business, will act as hosts.
Last month's court decision came in a suit filed in 1999, well before the
recent industry consensus on keeping the Web's basic technology open and free
of royalties. The plaintiffs' allegation in the suit was that Microsoft
illegally appropriated their technology, so it was not Microsoft's to
contribute to an open standard.
A federal jury in Chicago found that Microsoft's technology infringed on work
done by Michael Doyle, the founder of Eolas Technologies in Chicago, while he
was an adjunct professor at the University of California at San Francisco.
The University of California is the other plaintiff in the suit.
In the trial, Microsoft asserted that its technology, called Active X, was
developed internally and tried to show that similar research predated Mr.
Doyle's work. The jury was not convinced.
Microsoft has vowed to appeal the ruling, but the appeals process could take
18 months or more. In the meantime, the court ruling says that Microsoft
should pay Eolas $1.47 for every copy of the Windows operating system
containing the browsing software that is shipped. Microsoft ships more than
100 million copies of Windows a year.
``It would not be prudent for us to sit back and let the meter run by just
having the legal process play out,'' said Michael Wallent, a general manager
in Microsoft's Windows division who testified in the Eolas case.
The jury's decided on its award on Aug. 11; the next day, Mr. Wallent called
Tim Berners-Lee, the director of the Web consortium, to say that the action
meant Microsoft might well have to change its browser. He said the company
wanted to work with the Web community to make sure any changes it carried out
would cause as little trouble as possible for the rest of the industry.
The consortium organized a four-hour meeting on Aug. 19 at the San Francisco
offices of Macromedia, a producer of software for showing animations on the
Web. Those invited were the leading producers of multimedia Internet and Java
applications, including Real Networkscoei, Sun Microsystemscoei, Apple
Computercoei and Adobecoei, as well as Macromediacoei.
Microsoft proposed three possible design tweaks to its browsing software to
ensure compliance with the court ruling. These include having personal
computer users approve a ``click to proceed'' box to run multimedia programs
from the browser and modifications that other software companies and Web page
designers can make. All would require some adjustments from companies,
executives say, but should not affect ordinary PC users significantly.
``We're working to make sure that whatever we do does not have a big impact
on users or the industry,'' Mr. Wallent said.
Other industry executives seem to agree. ``This has the potential to be broad
in scope,'' said Al Ramadan, an executive vice president at Macromedia. ``If
anything has to change, we are confident we can manage around the problem
with some straightforward fixes.''
For their part, the Eolas plaintiffs are keeping the pressure on. Every day
that Microsoft ships Windows with Internet Explorer, the company's potential
liability increases. ``Yes, Microsoft has continuing liability, it continues
to infringe,'' said Martin R. Lueck, a partner in Robins, Kaplan, Miller &
Ciresi, who represents Eolas. ``Microsoft gets paid for Windows. Why
shouldn't Eolas get paid for its invention.''
There are, of course, other options besides a forced change in the Microsoft
browser and a continuing legal fight. As is so often the case in legal
disputes, the fierce stands of high-minded principle on each side tend to be
swept away quickly if the settlement price is agreeable to both sides. In the
last year or so, Microsoft has settled a number of private suits.
(von NY Times)
[IMG]http://starzaki.eu.org/~rael/kdepl/kdeusersmall.php?kdeuserid=1951[/IMG] Zitat
Chef: Hey Admin! Ich hab gestern Besuch von 'nem Aussendienstvertreter eines MS-Direktvertriebs gehabt. Der hattte dort eine CD mit Argumenten fuer Windows. Daraus ging hervor, dass wir mit Windows enorm Geld einsparen koennen. Wieso tun wir dies nicht?
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