Eolas, a technology research company, has won multiple lawsuits against Microsoft for patent infringement and is now in the process of suing 22 more. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday claiming the tech vendors and other companies violated two Eolas patents. Eolas has had the technology for over fifteen years and claims "Profiting from someone else's innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair. All we want is what's fair." Eolas wants the companies currently using the technology to stop AND pay triple the damages for willful infringement of the patents.
The defendant companies in this case are rather large companies, Adobe Systems, Google, Yahoo, Apple, eBay, Amazon.com, Citigroup, the Go Daddy Group, Staples, Office Depot, Sun Microsystems and Texas Instruments.
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20091006/tc_pcworld/eolasfilespatentlawsuitagainst23companies_1
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This is a perfect example of how in the always evolving world of technology it is so important that innovations are tracked and credited to the proper companies. It is a very large part of why I want to be a corporate paralegal. Keeping a close eye on the industry and your competitors is an integral part of staying competitive and profitable in business.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI understand the issue of patent protection and certainly why Eolas is upset about the alleged patent infringement. However, I also wonder why it is that 23 companies, many of them very large and respected companies, did not recognize that they were infringing on Eolas patents. Were the patents not well documented? Is the software so widely used that no one realized it had been patented? I am interested to hear how this cse plays out.
ReplyDelete