Autodesk Infringes on Anti-Piracy Patent

Microsoft and Autodesk have to pay $133 million to David (as in David and Goliath) Colving after losing a patent infringment case. The case involved anti software piracy patents.

How's that for irony? Autodesk's software to prevent others from stealing was itself stolen.

Autodesk is going to "pursue its options" -- whatever that means.

Read all about it here:

Autodesk Loses Texas Patent Case, Has to Pay $18M - Bloomberg

Autodesk Found Guilty of IP Theft - Ralph Grabowski

Jury: Microsoft, Autodesk Infringed on Patents - cio.com

Autodesk, Microsoft Lose in Texas Patent Case - San Jose Mercury News

That's just a few-- there were so many news items about this that it was hard to find any other news today.

Comments

[Roopinder Tara]

The news got everyone's attention mostly because of Microsoft's involvement. As far as the industry analysis, I only saw two: Ralph Grabowski's (worldcadaccess.typepad.com) and Evan Yares' (www.evanyares.com/the-cad-industry) -- which points out that Autodesk and Microsoft had developed their technogies before the patent was filed.

[ralphg]

> ...there were so many news items about this...

Yes, but they were all the exact same story. No one dug any deeper than to repeat the initial report by Reuters.

Quantity over quality.