News Start-up claims network injunction against Longhorn

IN the same week that Apple announced it's Tiger release date, It seems that Redmond's next gen OS, Longhorn, could face legal issues over networking technologies incorporated into Billcrosoft's long awaited magnum opus. This from ZDNet:

A small Californian company says it has been granted a preliminary injunction preventing Microsoft from incorporating a patented networking method into future versions of Windows.

Alacritech said on Wednesday that the injunction blocks Microsoft from using its Chimney architecture, which Alacritech said Microsoft plans to include in both a "scalable networking pack" for Windows Server 2003 and in Longhorn, the next version of Windows.

Microsoft's Chimney software provides support for hardware that accelerates networking using the TCP/IP standard, which underlies the Internet and countless private networks. Microsoft designed Chimney to minimise compatibility issues with existing computing technology.

More here

Permian -> Triassic -> Jurassic -> Cretaceous -> Tertiary -> Quaternary - > Longhornian?

 

Aaah, yet another company trying to take a bite out of Big M.

Gotta side with Microsoft on this one, sounds like some weedy little firm with an eye for a quick buck trying to take advantage of the US' legal system's hostile attitude to Microsoft to me.

 

Next week's news: "Microsoft purchases Alacritech in multimillion dollar deal"

 

Or -
Next week's news: "CEO of Alacritech vanishes under mysterious circumstances"

Um - er - sorry. Not really into conspiricy theorys - but Bill is pretty ruthless.
I bet if he thought he could get away with it....... nevermind - you never know who's reading.......

 

But according to the article, Alacritech already developed, patented and owns the license for the technology prior to Microsoft including it in Longhorn. How is that trying to take advantage of MS?

 

Just because the company developed something that does the same thing does not mean that MS is trying to rip them off.

It's more likely to be independant parallel develpment.

You can Patent a concept.

We'll have ot wait for the outcome of the lawsuit to know the truth.

 

Its a shame really. There really *is* no bigger giant to go against in a case like this. M$ could literally throw the GDP of a small country at this lawsuit to make it go away and still have money left to take most of New York out for Pizza...

But good luck to them anyway. As my business mind thinks: "Big companies are too inflexible to be able to innovate anymore, instead they wait for someone smaller to invent something new, then steal their bandwagon"

Paolo

 

So have this Alacritech mob got to show that MS actually stole their idea, or simply that they're kinda the same thing if you squint a little and tilt your head to one side?

Surely for MS to win, all they'd have to do is show that they were developing this system before Alacritech applied for a patent? Should be relatively straightforward I'd have thought.

 

It is conceivable that Microsoft did just use the technology and didn't pay for the license. It has happened before. If you guys started a company and developed something, and Microsoft came along and used it with out asking, you'd be spitting nails. Give Alacritech the chance to prove their claim, since it the positions were reversed, Microsoft would have stomped them clean back to the dark ages.