..about this guy's claims. I have this niggling suspicion that Microsoft settled because he made it clear that he'd play the tarbaby and cost them a fortune to fight, when they could pay a small amount and make him go away. His pugnacious attitude is probably what promotes this impression. Love 'em or hate 'em, you have to admit that Microsoft are pragmatic. They are always looking out for their interests- their motivation is to seek the best outcome for microsoft.

The difference here is that the EFF aren't looking to shut up a patent troll that attacked them, paying it to go away and get back under its bridge, like MS and Yamaha were. Nope, they're actually going after the patent troll- their motivation is to overturn a ludicrous patent rather than anything else, and thus have no motivation to settle confidentially. Moreover, they don't need to pay a fortune, as they have a pretty good go-to list of decent lawyers who will work for free.

There's no motivation for the EFF to settle. He might think he "took" Microsoft, but they couldn't be arsed to fight, as there was little in it for them- they could have ripped his head off and spat down his neck if they really cared.

This should be fun to watch.

I hope that they overturn the patent, then force the troll to refund all the license fees he's collected, with interest.

Use him as an example to the rest of the trolls out there!

TBH, I don't mind who they use as an example, but I think all patent trolls are scum.

As a previous poster said, the Microsoft case was just "if(lawyers fees > license fees) pay_license(); else fight_the_bastard();"

Where's the troll (doll) icon?

"He says it involves a method for compressing synthesized sounds into a tiny package and reproducing them in real time on electronic devices, an approach few were taking in the early 1990s, when he invented it."

If there were people already using it - no matter how many - when he "invented" it, did he really invent it?

...a method for compressing synthesized sounds into a tiny package and reproducing them in real time on electronic devices... What, like a piano-roll?

I just looked at the patent briefly and I'm no expert. However, outside of the MIDI did not this all happen with the MOOG synthesizer a very long time before even Microsoft could have been involved?

If we are talking Mid etc should we not also look at .SID (C64 files) these were the same thing surely (as the person above mentions soundtrack mods too).. Have to laugh at these people sometimes.. Wonder if he will sue me for making my portable music player back in the 90's.. sad...

It is all very nice argument but you people miss the point: patents are awarded by people who have no idea what the patent applications are about.

Could Newton have decided between Einstein and Bohr and Heisenberg qua the physics theories bruited in circa 1905 to 1925? Could Newton have understood the place of Rutherford, de Broglie, Dirac, Schroedinger, or Pauli? How about Max Born?! How about Emmy Noether (seriously, she laid down the smack for variational methods that underpin a lot of modern engineering and physics)? Or Hilbert, or du Bois, or Fermat, Snell, Hamilton or Lagrange? Descartes? Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī? Diophantus? Need I mention Euclid?

Or, God help you, because you simply cannot argue with him, a man from who's brow modern mathematics rose like a leviathan, Gauss? Gauss died about 250 years ago! Yet his work underpins all the scientists and engineers and venture capitalists since!

IT patents, like physics and math theories, stand 99.9999999999% of the time on the shoulders of past work and ultimately on the shoulders of some giants. You all know that this is true.

The patent office is run by pygmies. One might inquire whether hiring practices are set via IP and high tech company influence, or is it just a result of pay the lowest bidder to supply the clerks, or is influence exerted at a lower and more corrupt level.

Patents are used these days to control, for as long as possible, what people who can do, do.

Time for a patent jubilee, I say.

Or a revolt of the geeks?

"an approach few were taking in the early 1990s, when he invented it."

If that's his own words, then he's just invalidated his own argument.

If few people were doing it, then at least one was -- and if one was already doing it, then the patent is void.

Case closed.