Stop Microsoft
All Things Microsoft => Microsoft as a Company => Topic started by: The Anti-Microsoft on 28 February 2004, 21:45
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A US District Court has agreed that the word 'card' means any 'flat, rectangular piece of stiff material', paving the way for intellectual property company E-Pass to pursue its claim that HP iPaqs running Microsoft software violate its patent for a "multi-function card".
Register readers may be more familiar with E-Pass' other action, against PalmOne. The legal tussle with Microsoft and HP - technically, against Compaq; the suite was filed before the merger - is a parallel one.
E-Pass claims the Microsoft's Pocket PC operating system violates patent number 5,276,311 (http://164.195.100.11/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='5,276,311'.WKU.&OS=PN/5,276,311&RS=PN/5,276,311),which it administers on behalf of the inventor, Hartmut Hennige. The so-called '311 patent' essentially describes an electronic wallet used to hold credit card details securely on said multi-function card.
Like PalmOne before it - again, technically 3Com, since that suit was filed before the Palm IPO and the subsequent split into PalmOne and PalmSource - Microsoft argued that the word 'card' implied a specific range of sizes. And since Pocket PCs don't come in those sizes, such devices could not to be held to infringe the 311 patent.
The Register: Judge denies MS attempt to re-define 'card' (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/68/35904.html)
[ February 28, 2004: Message edited by: Anonymous Coward ]