After winning decisively against Autodesk and Microsoft -- and making $140 million off the two companies --, Z4 is launching another lawsuit.
This time it is over the activation process in Vista and Office 2007. Z4 says the changes Microsoft made were insignificant, and thus worthy of being dragged back into the courts. Autodesk does not seem to be targeted this time around.
Some more details on the first law suit:
-- The judge added $25 million more in damages against Microsoft for litigation misconduct because it withheld evidence of its actions and did other nasty stuff.
-- Autodesk had to pay $322,000 in attorney fees, in addition to its $18 million fine.
Looking at this software patent mess, one would expect software to be more expensive in the US, not the other way around. No idea seems to be too simple for a patent.
That said, it's always nice to see pro software patent companies like Microsoft being struck by suits like these: one hopes they'll wake up someday.
Is Autodesk a litigative company? Apart from the suit vs. Open Design Alliance, I don't think that I've heard anything?
For now, software patents are not enforcable in the EU, but check out some scary patents on http://webshop.ffii.org/
Posted by: Henrik Vallgren | Dec 03, 2007 at 06:51 AM
Z4 better consider suing BMW as well. They use the Z4 name for one of their models...
Posted by: Stogie | Dec 04, 2007 at 10:30 AM