Microsoft had to pay $120 million, and Stac had to pay $13.6 million.
But Microsoft also settled some claims out of court with a $39.9 million
dollar investment in Stac, and paid $43 million in royalties.
Yes, billg had a bad day. comparable to my losing $100
On Fri, 10 May 2024, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote:
I was going to say, if it was only $100K then old Billy Boy would've
laughed all the way out of court and on the way home.
Yes, as soon as I sent that, I knew that I had screwed up.
I remember the Stac lawsuit. It was just another company actually doing
innovation whose technology Microschlock tried to appropriate in its
typically and despicably underhanded ways. Stac was one of the few (only?)
companies to come out pretty well after "partnering" with MS.
Too much proprietary information shared too early in the negotiations.
The award was based on "$5.50 per copy", . . .
When Seattle Computer Products, who had a royalty-free license to sell
MS-DOS, was on the rocks, and MICROS~1 was terrified of somebody like AT&T
getting that, they did the right thing, and simply BOUGHT the company.
As always seems to happen in these kinda cases (just like Word and
Mac), it was never adequately spelled out whether "The operating system"
meant version 0.9, or all versions including current, and what products,
such as Windoze could be construed to be derivative products.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
