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mickie.kext
June 26th, 2010, 11:16 PM
Salesforce.com has fired back at Microsoft, claiming parts of Redmond's cloud and Windows 7 violate its intellectual property.

Microsoft has trampled five Salesforce patents, the company claimed, with the Windows Server AppFabric for installing and provisioning apps on Azure; Windows Live Services including Hotmail and SkyDrive storage; .NET; Windows 7; Server 2008 R2; and SharePoint products and technologies.

In a US court filing, Salesforce claims Microsoft willfully violated the company's patents by incorporating them into its online services and products. The patents cover dynamic multi-level cache, a method for provisioning services, Java object cache server for databases, error reporting and work sharing, and communication with a web site.

Salesforce is not just asking that Microsoft be forced to pay three times the normal damages because it willfully infringed the patents. Salesforce also wants an injunction that stops Microsoft from using the patents. You can read the filing here.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/26/salesforce_patent_action_microsoft_cloud


Comment :KS

Legendary_Bibo
June 26th, 2010, 11:19 PM
Microsoft stealing something that isn't theirs then turning around and selling it to make a profit. Nothing new. :D

mickie.kext
June 26th, 2010, 11:50 PM
Microsoft stealing something that isn't theirs then turning around and selling it to make a profit. Nothing new. :D

Umm... that is not the point. The gist here is that Microsoft sued Salesforce.com few months ago, claiming that Salesforce infringes 9 Microsoft's (very ridiculous) patents. I should have said that in OP: This is a counter-suit.

Microsoft knew they couldn't win when they sued, just FUDing Salesforce to make their Microsoft Dynamics look less lame than it really is.

There is also speculation that Microsoft approached Salesforce to license Linux patents because Salesforce uses RHEL internally. When Salesforce said no can do, Microsoft sued using some generic patents because they don't really have any legit patents that Linux infringes.

Now the news is that Salesforce punched back and they don't want Microsoft to pay them. They want Microsoft's products off the market:


Salesforce is not just asking that Microsoft be forced to pay three times the normal damages because it willfully infringed the patents. Salesforce also wants an injunction that stops Microsoft from using the patents.

Microsoft got more than they bargained for.

KiwiNZ
June 26th, 2010, 11:56 PM
Thread title edited to be less inflammatory

Swagman
June 26th, 2010, 11:57 PM
I'd make donation to Salsforces legal costs if it means they win !!

chrisjsmith
June 27th, 2010, 11:26 AM
Salesforce are a far more evil company than Microsoft is and ever will be. Their entire business model is basically a lock in one which stops people accessing their own data.

I hope Microsoft wins.

If salesforce are going on about Azure/AppFabric, most of the work is prior art from Martin Fowler circa 1998 and is open source knowledge!

Note that they are not suing Sun/Oracle over this (who violate the same patents apparently) because Salesforce is powered by Oracle and Java.

rottentree
June 27th, 2010, 12:25 PM
These intellectual property and patent wars are so boring and stupid especially considering software. These aren't works of art so I don't get it why two software couldn't resemble parts of each other (intentionally or unintentionally) when the usage of the software demands it.

This here is our latest chair model. Why does it have only one leg? Well you see Bob invented the chair and so it's his intellectual property. Our lawyers have concluded that in order to avoid being sued by Bob we can only make a chair with less than two legs.

mickie.kext
June 27th, 2010, 03:13 PM
Salesforce are a far more evil company than Microsoft is and ever will be. Their entire business model is basically a lock in one which stops people accessing their own data.

I hope Microsoft wins.

If salesforce are going on about Azure/AppFabric, most of the work is prior art from Martin Fowler circa 1998 and is open source knowledge!

Note that they are not suing Sun/Oracle over this (who violate the same patents apparently) because Salesforce is powered by Oracle and Java.


I agree that SaaS is bad by design. Especially when we are talking about important data like this.

But you obviously missed what is this about. Salesfroce didn't sue Oracle because Oracle didn't attacked Salesforce first. Which Microsoft did.
Here is when Microsoft sued:
http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/05/microsoft_sues_salesforcecom_alleging_patent_infri ngement.html

They wanted to extort money for patents and when Salesforce didn't wanted to pay racket, Microsoft sued. And they sued them for basic update functionality:
http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/05/basic_software_updates_at_issue_in_microsoft-salesforce_dispute.html

Typical Microsoft patent trolling, like Salesforce CEO said (http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100525/salesforce-com-ceo-on-microsoft-suit-whatd-you-expect-from-a-patent-troll/). And why Microsoft did this? Because they want to remove competitor (Salesforce), put their Dynamics in cloud and lock-in _everyone_. But they didn't expect Salesforce to strike back.

If someone is going to have that kind of lock-in, I prefer not to be Microsoft. Salesforce does not have an OS and does not have interest in muscling other OSes out of the picture. Heck, Red Hat uses Salesforce.

phrostbyte
June 27th, 2010, 04:47 PM
I liked the original title better. :) Seemed more accurate.

beetleman64
June 27th, 2010, 05:27 PM
That's a refreshing change. It's nothing new, it's just that someone is finally standing up to MS. Keep at it, they're just a big oaf who likes to squash ants.

spoons
June 27th, 2010, 06:26 PM
Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

prodigy_
June 27th, 2010, 06:42 PM
Salesforce.com? Whoa, a remnant of dotcom era. :-)

Anyway, M$ will just buy them so nothing really interesting here.