Microsoft in patent battle over Visual Studio

Aiming to head off further legal action against its customers, Microsoft is asking a federal court to declare that its Visual Studio product doesn't violate patents from WebXchange.

In a suit filed last week in San Francisco, Microsoft seeks a declaration that WebXchange's patents are invalid, unenforceable, or that Microsoft does not infringe on the patents. The move comes after WebXchange sued three Microsoft customers earlier this year in Delaware.

In its suit, Microsoft said that WebXchange's lawsuit has "placed a cloud over Visual Studio software, Web services, and the SOAP protocol."

"Microsoft filed this action to protect our customers and ourselves against spurious patent infringement lawsuits filed by WebXchange," Microsoft said in a statement. "We will demonstrate to the Court that WebXchange's patents are not infringed by Microsoft technology and that WebXchange's patents are invalid and unenforceable."

The three companies that were sued have all sought indemnification from Microsoft, as have some companies that have not yet been sued, Microsoft said in its suit.

Microsoft's suit was noted earlier on Monday by IDG News Service, which reported that FedEx, Dell, and Allstate were the three customers sued by WebXchange.

[waynehartman]

Great reporting there, Ina, your story really doesn't add much to the article you link to. How 'bout doing some original reporting and get us some detail on the patents that are allegedly being infringed upon.

[DrtyDogg]

This guy's got a set of balls on him though. It looks to be a really small company, the contact us page on the site and the website registration point to a home in CA. Brass ones to sue FedEx, Dell, and Allstate.

[DrtyDogg]

If I read the patent right he's claiming to have invented server side web programming, three years after Apple's webObjects was released. In the patent he cites CGI as the only way to accomplish 2 way interaction over a network. Patent # 6,212,556

[TheCodeMonk]

I just looked at the patents and read (browsed but it's quite long) the patents they have and this WebXchange is going to go down in flames. They are pretty much saying that they invented data exchange over the internet. Whether or not this "invention" they claim is theirs relates to the actual protocol they use or the "process" they use to do data exchange will have to be discovered in court. Either way, they are not going to win. If they claim they invented the process, the patent will be invalidated. If they claim that they invented the "protocol" they use, then they will still use because I highly doubt that all three companies used what they "invented".