Sony, McAfee, sued over software activation patent
After suing Microsoft for patent infringement, Uniloc USA is now turning its sights on a host of other companies.
In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in the eastern district of Texas Thursday, Uniloc is alleging that its patent for software activation is being violated by the likes of Sony, McAfee, Activision, Quark, Borland Software, and Aspyr Media.
The patent in question #5,490,216, awarded to Uniloc founder Ric Richardson in 1996, covers a method for registering and activating software locked to one PC. The technology was developed as a way to prevent users from freely installing or copying a single software program to multiple machines.
Legal action was taken to "protect our products and our company," Uniloc CEO Brad Davis said in a statement.
Uniloc has been dueling with Microsoft over the same claim since 2003, alleging that the software activation key used in Windows XP and Office is a violation of the Uniloc patent. A jury ruled in favor of Uniloc in April of 2009, slapping Microsoft with a $388 million fine. But that verdict was overturned on appeal last September as the court then found in favor of Microsoft. Uniloc is appealing the judge's ruling, and the case is scheduled to be heard in September.
Uniloc, a privately-held business in California, sells security products designed to guard against software piracy. Software companies and PC game publishers are among its customers.
Lance Whitney wears a few different technology hats--journalist, Web developer, and software trainer. He's a contributing editor for Microsoft TechNet Magazine and writes for other computer publications and Web sites. You can follow Lance on Twitter at @lancewhit. Lance is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and he is not an employee of CNET. 
(isn't there any way we can, you know, take the town of Marshall, Texas and just shove it into the Gulf? Maybe sell it to BP).
Personally, and in spite of the schadenfreude of seeing an IP lawsuit happen over a form of DRM, I still maintain that software patents suck, are (IMHO) unconstitutional, and should be dismissed and/or disregarded.
Or they are merely suing because those software vendors didn't sign up for their protection.
Protection against being sued, I mean...
Had to be done. From a software developer no less... :-)
- by techman21 August 5, 2010 9:10 AM PDT
- The patent seems legit, but it's been 15 years since it was granted...so...I think there should be a time limit on these things, and that only the original patent requester should be able to pursue this kind of litigation.
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(11 Comments)"the platform unique ID generating means utilizes hard disk information and/or other computer hardware or firmware information to determine the platform unique ID"
Interestingly, the patent includes this statement:
"The above describes only some embodiments of the present invention and modifications, obvious to those skilled in the art, can be made thereto without departing from the scope and spirit of the present invention. "
So it sounds like they're trying to cover all possible implementations of this kind of system...