Filed under: Audio, Business, News, Windows, Microsoft
Microsoft slapped with patent madness, what's next?
by Grant Robertson Feb 24th 2007
The case in question dates back to 2003, and its settlement cost could have been three times larger if the court ruled the infringement to be willful. Microsoft in fact did have a license to use the Mp3 encoding technology, from German company Fraunhofer, who co-developed the Mp3 specification in tandem with Lucent's forefather, Bell Labs. Microsoft's license to Fraunhofer for the same intellectual property cost only $16 Million; The California settlement is equal to 93 times the original cost of that license.
Patent cases in the US are spiraling out of control. Last year it cost RIM over $600 million dollars to settle the lawsuit against its Blackberry devices and, to make matters worse, new and more esoteric patents are being issued all the time. If left unsolved by the politicians, where does this insane patent spiral lead us in the long term?
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
