CNET News.com reports: “Mobile phone maker Sendo has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging the attempted theft of technical expertise and proprietary technology, adding to the intrigue surrounding its recently terminated relationship with the software giant.” Last month Sendo announced that the company decided to license Nokia’s Symbian based Series 60 Platform for future Sendo smartphones instead of Microsoft’s software. Update: Reuters.co.uk has some more information.
Time after time the same scenario plays out. A small innovative company comes up with a good product or idea. Microsoft, the stray dog it is, comes sniffing around acting friendly. Before long there is a Microsoft version of the same product. The small company sues and Microsoft replies with “no merit”. All should learn this lesson.
Stay away from Microsoft. Stay away from their products. Only then will this parasite of a company cease to exist.
<sarcasm>now i understand how microsoft create “innovation”</sarcasm>
The same thing allegedly happened to Be, Inc. Compaq was developing a jukebox system using BeOS. MS found out about it and all of a sudden Compaq tells Be that they “shared” some of Be’s IP with MS. Said jukebox is later released as a WinCE product.
Actually, this reminds me of Microsoft’s dealings with STAC technologies. Microsoft used STAC’s patented compression algorithms in its own product (Doublespace, I think).
such as Mono team, by developing .NET for Linux. Nice, but thanks. : )
all you IP are belong to us.
If you have “special” info into an industry and you start shopping it around to ANY of the big dogs they WILL try to screw you.
Sendo either doesn’t know this, making them retarded and deserve to be put out of business. Or, they do know this and are trying to play the “we’re the victims of big bad microsoft” card. I’m voting on option number 2.
Ask DEC(Digital), after most of the VMS developers left DEC and moved to MS the
first release of WinNT came out, and turned out to be almost identical to the
latest VMS(down to the kernel), soon after that DEC sued MS, they settled some
years later, MS agreed that in exchange for the stolen code they would develop
a version of NT for Alpha, the version was released, but never went anywhere
because there was almost no software for it(oh, the wonders of closed
software!).
And I think there is no need to even mention what MS did to IBM with OS/2…
I’m sure there are many other examples… Sun and Java also come to mind.
Those who forget history are damned to repeat it.
\\k
MS is making a habit of doing “stupid” stuff, the empire is slowely falling appart. Just because MS is the big kid on the block doesn’t make then invincible.
Here is another current case:
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/print/0,15935,400412,00.html
Same story, basically.
This happens all the time. At any given time, Intel is under several different lawsuits from the likes of Intergraph or other chip companies over chip-design technology patent issues. And vise versa. Same with IBM or HP. These court cases are often bitter and acrimonious too. If you take a serious look you will find dozens of examples of this.
All of the big dogs screw with each other and everyone else every single chance they get. That’s why NDA’s are getting so ridiculously pervasive in the industry (I had to sign one just to attend a tech vendor’s conference recently!). Get real.
Don Cox,
I have just finished reading the entire story you linked and am sceptical of the outcome. If MS knew of a product designed to do a certain task, then set about to re-create it, that isn’t illegal in itself. Especially damaging to the possible verdict is the level of secrecy allegedly maintained by InterTrust. How could MS illegally copy something if they never had full access to the product?
Something similar is likely the case with Sendo, although the story has few details regarding the actual method of “theft.”
This is a vague comment, vague enough to be meaningless, but I bet the reverse is more often the case: companies see successful MS products and try to copy/imitate the features of MS.
Best Wishes,
Bob
Of all the people who posted “Microsoft is Evil” in this thread, how many of you use GNU/Linux/Alt OS for their desktops? you wanna hurt M$, do it by switching. I’m fully weened from M$ OS, not to say that Linux has nearly the same 3rd party software support, but it is coming around. I left M$ OS’s out of principle. All this babble about means nothing for two reasons:
1. No one will stop using their products when their are viable alternatives.
2. This case will be thrown out because the Government and MicroSloth are sleeping together. Case and Point: The Justice Dept. saying ‘yea, you’re a monoply. but we don’t care’
Read this and f*cking weep, Linux zealots…
http://www.svtc.org/listserv/letter85.htm
“Breaking news! IBM corporation and two chemical companies have settled a $40 million lawsuit filed by two former workers. It is a blow to the high-tech industry that has long portrayed itself as “clean”. The former employees claim that exposure to toxic fumes at IBM caused their son’s birth defects.”
“They threaded the chemical through every one of my children,” Murray said from his home. “I worked there for 27 years. I never had a thought to betray them. But they betrayed me and my entire family — and hurt innocent children — for the cost of a microchip.”
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/8596.html
“IBM has already donated more than 10,000 pages of documents delineating the company’s Nazi dealings to Hohenheim University in Germany and to New York University. However, Hausfeld has faulted Big Blue for the lack of public access to these papers and for their lack of comprehensiveness.”
OH NO, BUT WAIT! IBM is so f*cking precious because they support Linux, so we all have to rally around them and support them unconditionally against MSFT, right? The Linux crowd would rally behind Hitler himself if he used Linux, wouldn’t they? It’s always MSFT that is the TRUE evil empire, no matter what the facts are, right?
Yes.
Ok, if you want to know…
My main workstation is a FreeBSD 4.x-STABLE box, and a few other boxes to play with on my home network running(among others): FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, VSTa and Plan9. I just installed a Debian box that I plan to use as file server.
At work we have a network of RedHat desktops, plus a bunch of Linux/BSD servers.
Total number of M$ programs used: 0
Happy now?
\k
P.S.: For the “Linux is not ready for the desktop” idiots: people that think that his computer is broken because the monitor is unplugged have a hard time telling the difference between Gnome/KDE and Windows, the secretaries in my office are proof of it.
P.P.S.: RE: Gil Bates (IP: 209.167.242.—)): You MS apologists are so pathetic that is not even fun to ridiculize you. With Linux zealots you can at least have fun telling them how much faster FreeBSD runs Linux binaries, or how bloated the GNU tools are, and things like that; with MS apologists you just feel depressed that there can be people so incredibly stupid.
And the exact same thing happened in at least two more instances:
– Borland developers lured to MS, Borland sued, dunn what happened after that. I don’t know if the technology actually made it into the Visual line. It was rather long time ago, mre or less the time of the STAC scandal.
– Oracle engineers being lured by MS, and soon after that MS SQL server started to suck less as finer-grained locking starts to be introduced.
Yet another in a long line of vendors that was caught naked and unawares.
I think Rex Ballard described this phenomenon much better than I can, in an old (1997) newsgroup posting. Refer:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=881977711.1…
“You MS apologists are so pathetic that is not even fun to ridiculize you.”
“Ridiculize” this, you little twerp…
http://www.svtc.org/listserv/letter85.htm
“In the IBM case, Michael Ruffing and Faye Carlton were employed in the 1980s at IBM’s semiconductor manufacturing plant in East Fishkill, N.Y. Ruffing mixed chemicals in large drums, while Carlton worked in a chemical-processing area.”
“According to court filings, Ruffing and Carlton came into contact with toxic chemicals that ultimately led to birth defects in their son, Zachary David Ruffing. Zachary, now 15, was born blind and with facial deformities that prevent him from breathing normally.”
“The settlement, disclosed Tuesday, is but one piece of the ongoing, multibillion-dollar legal fight between IBM and its chemical suppliers, and more than 220 IBM employees and their families at IBM semiconductor plants in San Jose, New York and Vermont.”
I think you understand that this thread is not about IBM’s past crimes. Do you see any news related with MS’s past crimes here? I did not. No one says IBM is perfect. But currently, they do not have any bad act or blames with news value. But MS has, Sando. I hope you see better now. Thanks. Chill out. Deniz.
No one is guilty until proven. Microsoft is not guilty anything related to Sando, yet. There is only a lawsuit, and I believe it is most probably a fake one, because most allegations against Microsoft is due to the bad PR. Probably Sando wants to pocket in some money because of the MS hate, like the Realnames company which get closed because Microsoft refused to put their technology to their browsers. Most of the MS bashers supported Realnames, but it turns out that they never thought what does Realnames do is essentially sell the English words to your company. Realnames CEO accused Microsoft because of the bad public PR of Microsoft, and he got attention.
Dunno why I bother to answer you, but can you explain to me what the hell has IBM to do with this??
If you care so much about what some random site says about IBM, try posting it to the front page; as far as I’m concerned, in this thread, that is 100% offtopic.
No, that someone says that this or that company has done something evil has *nothing* to do with this. We are talking about a very defined behavior pattern of one very specific company here.
Now please go back to your MS fantasy world to play minesweeper with clippy and stop bothering us. Thanks.
And I have been trolled, again… *sigh*
\k
The next time you get so fucking outraged about how purely diabolically EVIL M$ is, maybe I will be here to remind you that they do not poison hundreds of their own employees and their families with toxic wastes and then fight them in court over it while they are dying like IBM does.
That is obviously my only point and it is definitely a point very much worth making in this forum, where you clueless Linux propagandists are constantly bashing Microsoft for being a bad corporate citizen and you don’t really know what the fuck you are talking about. Well, I think IBM is an evil corporate citizen and I am going to exercise my privelege on this board to fucking say so, because I think that my reasons are a hell of a lot better than yours are and I will demonstrate to everyone clearly that they are.
If the editor thinks my comments are off-topic or inappropriate, then he or she will mod me down, simple as that – as long as that is not happening then you are just SOL and are going to have to put up with me being right here in your face, aren’t you?
Waah, IBM’s a bad company, so that makes Microsoft SOOO good because they just fuck people in the ass, that’s SOOOO much better!
Both companies have done wrong, that means NEITHER are good. If you can’t stand the idea that Microsoft is a bad company then you can go ahead and stuff Bill’s … back in your mouth so we don’t have to listen to you.
Microsoft did the same thing to a wireless company that starts with the letter Q — extracted information for their own use, but guised it as a “partnership”. Once this was realized, MS got the boot.
oh let me get this straight since you cant stand criticism of the ms platforms you have to bring that story up whih by the way is as tragic as it gets, but i can drag up similar stories from microsoft subcontractors, it is nothing unique, i repeat, it is nothing unique, sorry to ruin you black and white world .
re you btw familiar with the peru law?
<Sendo Sues Microsoft for Alleged Attempt of Theft>
To my best knowlegde is that one of the many core-businesses of M$. Borrowing IP from small companies. Nothing new in this world;-)
You people are so obsessed, it’s amazing. Why don’t you all take a second and look out the window (if you have one of course, mine looks at a wall).
Microsoft is evil but assuming the details of the Sendo case is just silly, let’s wait until we know exactly what happened before we start spouting ok?
I think that Gil Bates’ point is that monopolistic behaviour is not as bad as killing people, at least that’s how I read it.
Daniel
Right, it’s ok to kill companies just not people. Who cares if people can’t feed their kids, or have to live on welfare because they lost their jobs due to Microsoft’s behavior. Lets not help them, it’s not THAT BAD!
I think you are the only evil here. I wish I could sue you for making false claims, and trolling here. Because of you the economy sucks and people are less efficient. You are the one who don’t understand anything but believe in something just because you are told to do so. You are one of the reasons why we are still at this point. You are the reason of hungry people in africa. You are one of the reasons why human race has to suffer because of inefficiency. You are the reason why we don’t have true democracy. You are the one who smart evil ones pray on to make you believe in something not true and that way destroy the sucessfull hard working people’s work. I just wish I can sue such people to include a different brain than their original not so well working brains. I am pretty sure I can find a judge that will order that too.
Oh? That’s funny I’m working today, and paying my taxes so people like you can have a christmas. I the human race is much better off because of me personally. You unfortunately are the reason we have gun control laws. Sorry bub, you just can’t bring me down. I’m sorry if I appear “evil” because I don’t believe we should turn a blind eye to one problem just because there is another one. Merry christmas loser.
The Linux crowd would rally behind Hitler himself if he used Linux, wouldn’t they?
I don’t think they would go that far, I use Linux, but I would no do that.
I’m sorry to see that you lived in a fucked up world.
Sorry about the language, but I was trying to communicate with you in a way that your primitive mind would comprehend since your vocabulary seems to be centred around obscene language.
Microsoft has screwed people over, and they still do it. This is what Linux people are saying. IBM has screwed people over, they probably still do it, but, IBM has paid for most of it’s past crimes, did you not note that IBM did lose that case and had to pay Millions? IBM had to pay penalties for being a Monopoly probably before you were born! The law is broken 24/7/365, that’s life. But what baffles me is how people/corporations, manage to live on to make billions and screw even more people after they have been caught red handed several times!
In fact I do think it’s wrong that Linux “zealots” bash Microsoft, but you are NO better than them for labelling them as Zealots and insulting their intelligence for voicing their opinion.
Be Inc was informed by Apple that they would no longer be privy to technical details of new hardware, thus killing one major market for their operating system. Strange that this came right after Microsoft’s $200M rescue of Apple and their agreement to include Internet Explorer on the Apple desktop.
It’s as if this was a prerequisite of the rescue package. When one makes deals with devils, one has to live with the consequences. As a software developer I wouldn’t touch Apple either now, they’re tainted.
Linux people aren’t the only ones pissed at MS. It’s universal.
This, thankfully, doesn’t fall under anti-trust laws. This is theft, and this is the part of Microsoft I hate. However, if I put myself in Microsoft’s shoes, with tens of thousands of engineers, how are you gonna control them all? What happens if some engineer were too lazy to do their product and decided to steal something from their partners? Anything with a company that size that happen.
That’s the problem with big companies. However, that cannot be excuse. I hope if the allegations prove true, Microsoft be punished correctly (please, no fines
they can pay them without a pinch)
Good luck to Sendo
A bunch of geeks switching won’t cause Microsoft downfall, or at least a change. Plus, those geeks who are using Windows are using it for a reason, not for ideological reasons. Personally, if I had the money, and if Macs were faster, the OS I would be using now is OS X (shocks of shocks :-).
But I’m stuck with Windows.
Gil Bates, that’s the problem with big companies. But just to point out, the two ex-employees were in a different division than Linux-related divisions. Personally, I see IBM as a falling empire. A fate that would soon fall on Microsoft (and Wal-Mart, and other big companies). When you get too high, the only way to go is down.
I think HTC doesn’t need technical info from Sendo. They have already build all iPaqs and XDA (PocketPC Phone edition). They know all technologies used to build the SPV.
…as long as they don’t open the specifications of all of the Office Suite document formats.
I’d also like to see PDF open sourced…
OK. Lets’ settle the silly choice debate.
Yes, there are choices: in Operating Systems, in Desktop Productivity Tools, in Embedded Applications. Everyone has choices in all these categories, and always have had so.
The reason why Microsoft has been to court is not because they have been the dominant player in any of these categories, but because they have deliberately limited the number of choices you have to choose from.
The best example: if, in any particular field, there are several different applications available; two are five-star quality, the rest are three-star (or less). If one of the five-star options is eliminated, deliberately and underhandedly, by the company that makes the other five-star option, regardless of the method, then customers that want or need a five-star option have to buy from that company. It’s not that other choices don’t exist, it’s that they aren’t suitable.
Yes, other five-star options might appear in the future, but the effect is on consumers now, and is it for now that the company must pay. If it were not for such provisions to form the basis of an Anti-trust case, there would be monopolies left right and center in numerous industries.
So yes, people are using Windows for non-ideological reasons; many in fact. But lets’ not pretend that everyone has made a balanced, logical evaluation of the options available to them and has decided Windows is the best. Such assertions are nothing short of ludicrous.
//If one of the five-star options is eliminated, deliberately and underhandedly, by the company that makes the other five-star option, regardless of the method, then customers that want or need a five-star option have to buy from that company. It’s not that other choices don’t exist, it’s that they aren’t suitable. //
I’m a Windows user … but that comment really made me think.
Hmmmm….
PDF is as open source as it gets (there is open specification for the non-encryipted version), but Acrobat isn’t open source nor would it ever be. Besides, I’ll bet I could open a company making a office suite competing with MS without them actually opening their formats. (Actually, it would be easier this way, there would be less competitors…)