“Seattle-based software company Infoflows has been awarded $20m in damages by a US Court, ending a three year dispute with Corbis,” Andrew Orlowski reports for The Register. “The judge decided that Corbis illegally stole Infoflows’ intellectual property – its software.”

“The names may not immediately mean much to you. But Corbis was founded in 1989 by William Henry Gates III – founder of Microsoft – who is the largest shareholder in the privately-owned company,” Orlowski reports. “Infoflows is a small Washington state company founded by former Microsoft product manager Steve Stone six years ago.”

“Infoflows had developed a license management system for digital assets, including images, called JazzSpider. The startup signed a license agreement with Corbis, and in December 2005 sent Corbis a PowerPoint slide of how the JazzSpider software worked. In June the following year, a licensing agreement between the two was signed,” Orlowski reports. “Infoflows then discovered that Corbis was patenting its own system based on what Infoflows saw as its own IP. “

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: So, a company founded by Bill Gates enters into an agreement with another company, gets access to that company’s IP, steals it, and begins selling it on its own. For some reason, this sounds strangely familiar…