[Discussioni] su patenti e libretti

[Alessandro Rubini]

Seth Johnson riporta questo so patents (due giorni fa, ma solo ora
lo leggo):

> Subject: [Patents] InterTrust Says it Owns DRM, is Suing Microsoft

>> http://www.fortune.com/fortune/print/0,15935,400412,00.html

Lascio solo le parti piu` salienti, chi e` interessato puo` seguire
il link. Chi e` molto interessato e` gia` iscritto a patents a aful.org

> [...]
> In its current incarnation, InterTrust consists of 39
> employees and a patent portfolio: 26 issued patents and
> about 85 more pending, all in the fields of DRM and trusted
> systems.

> [...] The company says its patents
> are being infringed every time Microsoft ships its Windows
> XP operating system; Office XP suite; Word 2002 word
> processor; Excel 2002 spreadsheet; Outlook 2002 e-mail [...]

Sony e Philips voglio comprare la ditta, quindi dice:

> But many observers think the consumer electronics giants are
> purchasing more than just a potential revenue stream.
> Rather, the companies may be acquiring what the feds failed
> to get via their sputtering antitrust suit: a Microsoft
> containment strategy.

Poi fa la storia di questi qui, tra l'altro dicendo che il loro
prodotto non e` mai stato completato, anche se i clienti pagavano per
le belle promesse. E poi dice della causa a microsoft.

> [...]
> At the nitty-gritty level, Microsoft's defense against the
> patent suit is twofold: Its products do not infringe, and
> even if they did, InterTrust's patents are invalid. Poole
> emphasizes that the engineers who developed Microsoft's DRM
> products never saw InterTrust's. InterTrust did permit two
> Microsoft engineers, under a nondisclosure agreement, to
> spend a day looking at InterTrust's technology to try to
> verify that InterTrust really had what it claimed, Poole
> says. But these reviewing engineers were cordoned off from
> those who actually design and build Microsoft's products and
> were provided very limited information from InterTrust
> anyway, according to Poole. 

Ovviamente se quelli hanno il brevetto che sia una copia o no non ha
la minima importanza. 

> [...]
> And even if InterTrust's chances of winning were slight, its
> leverage would still be enormous. "I just don't see how a
> company the size of Microsoft can take the risk of having
> this go to trial and suffering the potential consequences,"
> says Nguyen. "We have 144 claims. All it takes is one claim
> to prevail." 

> [...]
> InterTrust and Microsoft clearly agree that DRM will
> eventually succeed in enabling businesses to assert
> ownership over any type of digital property. The only
> question then will be, Who will own DRM?
                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Alla fine siamo sempre li`. Monopoli legalizzati.