Below is post 1991, which is the year Linux came into existance. Linux (the GPLv2 Kernel) has never been brought directly to court for copyright violation. Even the current IBM vs SCO that implies that IBM put copyrighted work into Linux is floundering at the moment.
You are innocent till provent guilty, meaning that MS has a bad track record as shown below. Linux hasn't once violated anyone's copyright.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOSAs a response to Digital Research's DR-DOS 6.0, which bundled SuperStor disk compression, Microsoft opened negotiations with Stac Electronics, vendor of the most popular DOS disk compression tool, Stacker. Stac was unwilling to meet Microsoft's terms for licensing Stacker and withdrew from the negotiations. In the due diligence process, Stac engineers had shown Microsoft some Stacker source code. However, Microsoft chose to license Vertisoft's DoubleDisk instead of Stacker.[2]
Soon, MS-DOS 6.0 was released, including the Microsoft DoubleSpace disk compression utility program. Stac successfully sued Microsoft for patent infringement regarding the compression algorithm used in DoubleSpace. This resulted in the release of MS-DOS 6.21, which had disk-compression removed. Shortly afterwards came version 6.22, with a new version of the disk compression system, DriveSpace, rewritten to avoid the infringing code.
http://www.internetnews.com/security/ar ... hp/3393891A new patent battle is brewing -- this time over Microsoft's (Quote) claim over Caller ID for E-Mail.
F. Scott Deaver, owner of Failsafe Designs, says Microsoft is guilty of the "outright theft" of his product name and intellectual property (IP), and will seek legal and financial redress from the Redmond, Wash., software giant and anyone else that uses his technology that verifies e-mail is coming from the domain it claims.
http://www.alacritech.com/html/041305Al ... d_PI.shtmlAlacritech® Inc., the innovator of Dynamic TCP Offload™ data acceleration solutions that enable the highest performance and efficiency in networked systems, today announced a U.S. District Court granted Alacritech’s motion for preliminary injunction to prevent Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) from making, using, offering for sale, selling, importing or inducing others to use Microsoft’s “Chimney” TCP offload architecture slated to be available in both the “Longhorn” version of the Windows® operating system and in the Scalable Networking Pack for Windows Server™ 2003.
Alacritech sued Microsoft in Federal District Court on August 11, 2004, alleging that Microsoft’s existing and future operating systems containing the “Chimney” TCP offload architecture uses Alacritech’s proprietary SLIC Technology® architecture. The suit is based on two of Alacritech’s fundamental patents relating to scalable networking, U.S. Patent No. 6,427,171 and U.S. Patent No. 6,987,868, both entitled “Protocol Processing Stack for use with Intelligent Network Interface Device.”
http://www.intertrust.com/main/ip/settlement.htmlIn April 2001, Intertrust initiated a lawsuit against Microsoft. The lawsuit ultimately accused Microsoft of infringing 11 of Intertrust's patents and almost 130 of the company's patent claims.
The lawsuit centered on accused products based on the following technologies:
DRM and product activation technologies
.NET and related security technologies
Trusted and reliable operating system technologies
In bringing the patent infringement lawsuit, Intertrust believed that Microsoft's forward-going technology infrastructure significantly relied on Intertrust's inventions for DRM and trusted computing.
http://www.visto.com/news/releases/05_1 ... osoft.html(Redwood Shores, CA, December 15, 2005) - Visto Corporation has filed a legal action against Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) for misappropriating Visto’s intellectual property. The complaint asserts that Microsoft has infringed upon multiple patents Visto holds regarding proprietary technology that provides enterprises and consumers with mobile access to their email and other data. The company is seeking a permanent injunction that would prohibit Microsoft from misappropriating the technology that Visto and its cofounder helped develop nearly a decade ago.
“Microsoft has a long and well-documented history of acquiring the technology of others, branding it as their own, and entering new markets,” said Mr. Bogosian. “In some cases, they buy that technology from its creator. In other cases, they wrongfully misappropriate the intellectual property that belongs to others, which has forced them to acknowledge and settle large IP cases with companies like Sun, AT&T and Burst.com. For their foray into mobile email and data access, Microsoft simply decided to misappropriate Visto’s well known and documented patented technology.”
http://www.managingip.com/default.asp?p ... =EMS111262Telecoms company AT&T accused Microsoft of infringing its patent for a digital speech coder in its Window software in a lawsuit it filed in 2000. It sought damages not only for each computer loaded with Microsoft's Windows operating system that was made or sold in the US, but also for those made or sold overseas.
The two companies have already settled most of the dispute, but are litigating over the question of whether Microsoft is liable for the unauthorized distribution of the patented technology abroad.
http://www.managingip.com/default.asp?p ... &ISS=20643The likelihood of Microsoft having to pay millions of dollars in damages for infringing the contested Eolas patent for web browser technology increased last week when the US Patent and Trademark Office reaffirmed the patent's validity.
The USPTO's decision comes two years after the Office's director ordered a reexamination of the Eolas patent. Microsoft had contested the patent's validity after a US court ordered it to pay Eolas Technologies $521 million in damages for infringing the Eolas patent with its Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft subsequently appealed.
http://www.smartofficenews.com.au/Compu ... s/M8H5E3C7A bitter fight has broken out between Symantec and Microsoft. Symantec claims that Microsoft stole code from Veritas software. Microsoft say they bought it.
Either way Microsoft's relationship with Symantec and the Veritas brand is tarnished and the big loser could well be Symantec as Microsoft develops products that compete directly with them.
Symantec's director of legal affairs, Michael Shallop, has alleged that Microsoft employed its own programmers to take apart source code from storage virtualisation leader Veritas to which Microsoft was not entitled, and then used the information it gleaned from that code to create storage virtualisation device drivers for Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, and forthcoming versions of Windows Vista and "Longhorn"...
It also keeps going, feel free to google for more. When you can't invovate you buy it out, if you can't buy it, you steal it. Go GPL, it is the only safe choice.
