In recent years, cases involving computer software patent disputes have occurred constantly at home and abroad. Software patent litigation occurs in multimedia, operating system, browser, antivirus software, e-commerce and other fields. Microsoft, Oracle Bone Inscriptions, SUN, Adobe, Macromedia, Symantec, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and other companies have all been involved in computer software patent litigation. Here are three cases for reference:
Case 1: Adobe and Macromedia accuse each other of patent infringement.
Case: Adobe and Macromedia are both respected software companies in the world, but the two companies have been in a high degree of competition. In August 2000, on the eve of the listing of Macromedia's Flash5, Adobe sued the court, claiming that Macromedia's Flash software infringed their patent of "floating palette" software, which Macromedia denied and thought was a well-known technology for many years. In order to fight back, Macromedia suddenly filed a counterclaim in June 20001year, claiming that Adobe's Photoshop and GoLive software infringed their patents. In the end, the court ruled that Adobe's infringement was a fact and it was necessary to pay Macromedia $4.9 million in compensation. Similarly, Macromedia's infringement was also established, and it was necessary to pay Adobe $2.8 million in compensation.
Comments: Adobe, who fought the patent war first, won the first lawsuit, lost the second lawsuit, and suffered more. Macromedia has its own important patents, so it has nothing to hide. Faced with the patent war provoked by Adobe, Macromedia dealt with a man as he deals with you, and finally chose the patent counterattack, which achieved good results.
Case 2: Hilgraeve, a small company, makes a lot of money by patents.
Case: Symantec is the largest antivirus software company in the world, and its Norton series antivirus software is world-famous. In order to clean up the market on a large scale, Symantec tried to sue other antivirus software companies through copyright, anti-unfair competition and trade secret litigation, but these non-patent lawsuits failed to help Symantec achieve its goal. Unexpectedly, on September 5, 1997,1Hilgraeve, an unknown small company, sued Symantec for infringing its American patent number. 53 19776, which involves malicious static code analysis technology. When a file is transferred to a storage medium, the software scans the file for viruses. If the software detects a virus before saving the file, it will automatically stop saving the file. This patent dispute lasted for six years, and finally the two sides signed a settlement agreement on August 18, 2003. Symantec will pay Hilgraeve $62.5 million for the patent. 53 19776 and other patents of Hilgraeve. Thompson, CEO of Symantec, said: "We finally decided to settle this patent dispute because we must have this technology, which is very important for the company." In fact, the threat of worms such as "shock wave" to the network this year has made the above scanning technology very important not only for antivirus software, but also for firewall and intrusion detection software, and antivirus and firewall software are the core products of Symantec.
Comments: This is a typical case of "snake swallowing elephant". Hilgraeve, as a small company, defeated the powerful Symantec through patent litigation and made a lot of money, which is enough to prove the power of patent attack. In this way, if small and medium-sized software enterprises have their own core patents, they can attack and defend freely, advance and retreat freely, and software giants dare not avoid it.
Case 3: Microsoft received a huge compensation of 65.438+0.5 billion for infringing Alcatel software patents.
Case: On June 22, 2006, Alcatel-Lucent, the world's largest provider of Internet broadband equipment, sued Microsoft in the United States, accusing the latter of infringing seven of its patented technologies, requesting the court to order Microsoft to stop its patent infringement and compensate for the losses. On February 23rd, 2007, the US court ruled that Microsoft infringed two of the MP3 encoding and decoding software patents, and Microsoft had to pay Alcatel-Lucent $65.438+$500 million in compensation, creating the largest amount of patent infringement compensation in history. Among them, the calculation formula of the fine is the sales volume of Windows multiplied by the global sales price of computers since 2003. Microsoft refused to accept this judgment and prepared to appeal, arguing that its MP3 software did not involve Alcatel-Lucent's patent, but obtained the right to use it from Fraunhofer, a recognized licensor in the industry.
Comment: There may be many people in the software industry who hate Microsoft because it is overbearing and arrogant. But Microsoft is not a god. In recent years, many patent lawsuits have kept him busy, which has also deeply stimulated Microsoft to continuously increase its investment in patent applications. Although the patent dispute between Alcatel-Lucent and Microsoft has not been settled, it has greatly shocked the nerves of the entire MP3 industry. Because Microsoft is not the only company that bought MP3 patent licenses from Flawn Hof, hundreds of companies such as Adobe, Autodesk, Apple, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and Sun have bought MP3 patent licenses from Flawn Hof. If Alcatel-Lucent finally wins the patent lawsuit with Microsoft, these companies are likely to be implicated, and such huge infringement compensation is not chilling.
Conclusion: When the patent protection of computer software becomes the general trend, the "scourge" of patents will flood into every corner of the software industry sooner or later until the air is suffocating. History can prove that there is no way out in the face of passive beatings by powerful enemies, and there is no way out in escaping from reality. Only self-improvement is the best policy. Therefore, we believe that domestic software enterprises should keep pace with the times, get familiar with the rules as soon as possible, and have their own patented weapons to escort the great cause of enterprises.