Guess which patents are not infringed in the Microsoft Visual Studio suit?

WebXchange is suing Microsoft--or, rather, three of its customers--for allegedly infringing its patents in Microsoft Visual Studio, as CNET reports. Just desserts? Nah. Microsoft rarely sues anyone, preferring instead to threaten to sue.

Regardless, WebXchange's suit against Dell, FedEx, and Allstate for using Visual Studio is nuclear waste: by suing customers, WebXchange just made software licensing even uglier than it already was, making its own future business as difficult as it will become for Microsoft and every other vendor. Nice one, bozo. Suing customers--in this case--is always bad form and serves to hurt all players in the industry.

One bright spot in the litigation is that open source is not involved. Microsoft uses the open-source JQuery project in Visual Studio. Perhaps WebXchange forgot to throw in a claim against JQuery as part of its Visual Studio lawsuit.

Regardless, this is small comfort in a lawsuit that promises to muddy the waters for open-source and proprietary vendors alike.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Perhaps I missed something important- how does suing a competing company's customers help you to convince them to use your own product?

I suppose it gives you brand awareness though. Not necessarily the sort you would want however.

Sue Microsoft, yes, that makes sense. Suing their customers? That's just making enemies out of potential customers. I don't get that logic at all.

[odubtaig]

It's also going to fly like a lead zepellin. If someone's payed a company for a product that infringes on your work the money that is rightfully yours is in the hands of the party that got paid. You look for compensation from the seller including that which would have been paid to you by customers because that has already paid the money to them.

Only time I've ever seen anyone try to sue customers was SCO. We all know how that ended.

[Pete Bardo]

This isn't making sense to me--and none of cnet's articles are helping! How is it that the end user is being sued over alleged patent violations by the vendor? I can't even tell which part of Visual Studio is involved. Even if I knew, I probably wouldn't understand it. So how can I be responsible for the infringement when I purchased the software in good faith based on the vendor's implied assurance that they had/have the right to sell?

[gerrrg]

SCO seems to ring a bell, tactically speaking. I believe they lost last year in court (finally), and sort of withered back into the hole of anonymity...or at least irrelevance.

[gggg sssss]

RIAA seems to be successful at suing customers - still

[odubtaig]

Slightly different in that they're directly guilty of the infringement (let's face it, they have done something illegal even if the RIAA is completely unjustified in its response) and they don't have the legal representation of a large corporation like Dell. I think it has been reckoned that if the RIAA faced any serious legal opposition at any point that they'd be found to be unjustified in the measure of compensation that they seek.

Question is: why is such litigation only occurring in the USA? I believe the British Phonographic Industry has done some sabre rattling but nothing else.

[andrewkatz]

@odubtaig

Interesting point: the answer is that the damages obtainable in English courts are likely to be very low. Unlike the US, there is no set figure for statutory damages, and it's extremely unlikely that the court would award exemplary or other enhanced damages. The damages are either (1) an account of profits made by the infringer to the copyright owner; or (2) diminution in value of the copyright work as a whole. The file sharer makes no money out of their infringement, so no damages under (1), and it's very difficult for the copyright owner to prove the extent to which the infringer's actions have dimished the value of the work as a whole. The low level of damages likely to be awarded in England would hardly be the disincentive the BPI is looking for.

However, there is one law firm, at least, which offers rights owners private prosecutions in the criminal courts for copyright infringement. Generally speaking, criminal infringement only occurs when the copying happens in the context of a business, although it can also attach to file-sharers. I'm not particualrly happy about this development: the costs of the prosecution are met by the taxpayer. There's a government agency - the Crown Prosecution Service - which is intended to filter out unmeritorious claims before they hit the courts. By bypassing this, the copyright holders get to avoid this important safeguard.

This is why the rightsholders are permanently seeking tougher penalties, and the criminalisation of activities which were formerly civil infringements.