Microsoft loses Excel patent case

The Register ^ | 6/7/05 | John Oates

[Salo]

Microsoft has been found guilty of patent infringement and ordered to pay a Guatamalan inventor Carlos Armando Amado almost $9m in damages.

The US District Court of Central California court ruled that Microsoft had infringed on his intellectual property and ordered it to pay him $8.96m.

This figure relates to software sold between March 1997 and July 2003 - Judge David Carter may review this figure to include software sold since 2003, according to Reuters. Damages are far lower than the $500m claimed for because the jury rejected nine out of ten claims made by Amado.

Microsoft expressed disappointment at the verdict but welcomed the rejection of Amado's huge damages claim. The company said its engineers started work on the data transfer technology independently before Amado approached them.

In 1990 Carlos Armando Amado filed a patent for software which helped transfer data between Excel spreadsheets and Microsoft's Access database using a single spreadsheet. He said he tried to sell this technology to Microsoft in 1992 but they turned him down. According to Amado, Microsoft started including his software in their releases between 1995 and 2002.

Microsoft is facing patent claims over Longhorn, the next version of Windows, from networking company Alacritech. Its lawyers are also due in court with Forgent Networks which claims the software giant infringed its JPEG picture compression patent. ®

[zeugma]

Without too much problem.

The problem I saw when I was initially trying to do this several years ago before I started using OpenOffice, is that Excel simply could not deal with 220 years worth of data. All dates after 1900 showed up correctly, but dates older would not be recognised as legitmate dates. From what I understood at the time, this was related to the patch made by MS to correct for Y2K. That's why I asked about it specifically. I am interested in whether or not they'd actually fixed that behavior.

[snowsislander]

In 1990 Carlos Armando Amado filed a patent for software which helped transfer data between Excel spreadsheets and Microsoft's Access database using a single spreadsheet. He said he tried to sell this technology to Microsoft in 1992 but they turned him down. According to Amado, Microsoft started including his software in their releases between 1995 and 2002.

The patent was issued (5,701,400) and is not specific to any Microsoft product.

Are you sure that's the right patent? 5,701,400 was filed March 8, 1995, and granted December 23, 1997, which doesn't seem to match up with the times mentioned in the article? In looking through the patent, it cites many references subsequent to 1990, which seems to me not consistent with the timeline in the story. The latest cited reference in the patent seems to be from a 1994 publication: "A relevant experience is described in "Braimakers"[sic], a book by David H. Freedman, published by Simon & Schuster in 1994 (quotes excerpted from pages 40 to 42):"

[Bush2000]

I don't agree. I like Excel. I've used it as the primary tool for tracking $150 million construction jobs in the past. I do wish it would allow more than 65,000 rows, though.

Have you tried creating multiple worksheets and linking one sheet to another? Would solve your row problem.

[Fierce Allegiance]

That was kind of facetious. We only installed 15,000 caissons, so I really only needed 15,000 rows.

[Still Thinking]

Apparantly the court agreed 90% and disagreed 10%.

Actually, it sounds like they agreed 98.2% and disagreed 1.8%.

[Redcloak]

It's the only patent listed with Carlos Amado as the inventor. I realize that such things are a rarity, if not thoughtcrime in some circles, but perhaps the reporter made a mistake.

[snowsislander]

It's the only patent listed with Carlos Amado as the inventor. I realize that such things are a rarity, if not thoughtcrime in some circles, but perhaps the reporter made a mistake.

Maybe. I have looked at a few other copies of this story, though, and I think that they pretty much agree on the timeline? For instance, there was an IDG story:

08 June 2005

Microsoft fined $9 million for Excel patent infringement
The little man bites giant on behind.

By Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service

Microsoft has been ordered to pay $9 million for infringing a spreedsheet patent with Excel.

The jury in a Californian court awarded $8.96 million to Guatemalan inventor Carlos Amado who had sued the software giant for infringing his patent on software for linking Microsoft's Excel and Access applications through a single spreadsheet.

Amado filed for a patent on the technology in 1990 and approached Microsoft with it in 1992, said Amado's attorney, Vincent Belusko. The first infringing versions of the software appeared in 1995. Amado had sought about $400 million.

The verdict on Monday covered damages up to 31 July 2003. The court now has to consider damages from August 2003 to the present, but the additional amount will probably be less than what has already been awarded, according to Belusko.

"He wanted to be validated that this was his idea, that someone took it. I think he feels validated," Belusko said.

Microsoft said it was reviewing the verdict and other matters related to the case. "Microsoft began developing this technology as early as 1989. It was developed by our own engineers based on our own pre-existing technology," a spokesman claimed.

The Red Herring story has the same timeline.

[chronic_loser]

Actually, it was excel that started me looking away from MS. Back in the day when OS/2 was, I was writing and testing commodity trading programs. In those days, I was a floor trader, making a market in wheat and wheat options. I would load up OHLC for the different contract months and try doing "what if" analysis on several years worth of contract data. I went out and bought 64 meg of ram (paid 600 dollars for it and thought I STOLE it!) and loaded up excel on windoze. It was PAINFUL watching the memory swap out. Some of the formulas had to have 15 minutes to run. I picked up OS/2 and watched it pick up THE WHOLE DATA SET and crunch what used to take 4 hours worth of calcs in about 15 mins.

That started me seeing the serious deficiencies in the product MS was putting out, and then what Ballmer did to OS/2 (almost identical to what they are trying now with linux, btw), combined with the kind of wholesale theft of others property, convinced me that MS is simply evil.

Besides being evil, they are lazy, bloated, and more concernend with revenue than quality. When a company gets to that point, they are on the way out. It may not be linux which knocks them off, but it needs to be someone. They quit being "innovative" a long long time ago.

[Golden Eagle]

Besides being evil, they are lazy, bloated, and more concernend with revenue than quality. When a company gets to that point, they are on the way out.

Really? Then why is IBM still here then.

[chronic_loser]

Is that you, Steve? How is Ms Ballmer?

Like saying "fetch, Spot!" You are so predictable you are boring.

[Golden Eagle]

Answer the question if I'm so predictable. I think it's pretty obvious it blew your mind.

[Bush2000]

Scorched Earth. I think he turned into a pile of ashes.

[AtticusX]

The data is represented in this CSV file. Using that data, with Open Office Calc, I was able to produce this chart. Can you reproduce it while telling Excel that the first column is a year, not just a number?

Sure. Just open it in Excel - all the values are in the first column/cell A2 -
then in B2 you tell it that from the cell A2 take the first 4 numbers and put them right here.
=LEFT(A2,4)
In column C you tell it to run go get the last 11 numbers from A2 and bring them right back here.
=RIGHT(A2,11)
http://members.aol.com/realsundancekid/Simple_Extraction.mht

I love Excel. I use it for almost everything.

[MrsEmmaPeel]

That's all MS produces. Lots of pretty blinking lights, but none of 'em work.

LOL! MS Word drives me batty. But I do like the animated cat character in the "search" (it can't find anything, but its cute..)

[Salo]

IBM had some very rough times in the late 80s and early 90s. Big Blue was being called Big Red because it was losing so much money. They seemed to have turned things around. What remains a mystery to me is how Sun has stayed in business.

Really? Then why is IBM still here then.

[Golden Eagle]

Big Blue was being called Big Red because it was losing so much money.

I thought that was because they were selling so many mainframes to the Soviets? Well, I guess it did help get them back into the black.

What remains a mystery to me is how Sun has stayed in business.

Easy. Sun is still the volume leader in the Unix market, with 49.9% of shipments.

[LIConFem]

"Perhaps I didn't understand you clearly, but from what you described, cut and paste will CUT the text, including the formatting, and PASTE the same into Excel. "

Yes, that's the way it's supposed to work. And yet the font changes if I paste the cut/copied cells to another worksheet.

[LIConFem]

Here's a link for ya... Couldn't find that exact entry, but here's one that's darn'd close. After you read it, follow the link backward and see just how many bugs there really are in Excel.

Here's the link

[N3WBI3]

Microsoft has been found guilty of patent infringement and ordered to pay a Guatamalan inventor Carlos Armando Amado almost $9m in damages.

Microsoft is good, linux is evil... repeat 20 times and the anti oss shills will keep their insipid ranting to themselves..