A federal jury in Chicago awarded the University of California and a browser technology company nearly $521 million after finding on Monday that their patents were infringed by Microsoft.
“The suit, originally brought against the world’s largest software maker in 1999 by Eolas Technologies Inc., charged that Microsoft had used Eolas’ patented Web browser technology which allows other mini-applications to work with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, according to court documents. Eolas had originally sought licensing fees that would potentially have totaled $1.2 billion,” Reed Stevenson for Reuters reports.
Full article here.
I take issue with $521 million, should have been $521 billion. Also Exploder is far from being best of bred browser for a Mac, it sucks on a Mac, in fact most of M$ software sucks.
Microsoft has already anounced that they’ll appeal. Typical of them, they’d rather spend $520 million in legal fees just to drag it out until on one cares anymore, rather than actually admit to being wrong.
Anyone know if the patent is about the concept of plugins/applets, or some specific implementation of it?
Amen thomcarl! Enough said.