Recently, a Microsoft disclosure states that a Chinese contract developer working for MSN China was developing “Juku” a micro-blogging site similar to Plurk. According to Plurk, they were doing more than developing, they actually copied code. Microsoft has apologized, but Plurk most likely will take legal action. Similarly, Bing! is threatened with a lawsuit over its very name.

This is not Microsoft’s first rodeo however.

Consider the following suit that happened early in Microsoft’s history: Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation, 35 F.3d 1435 (9th Cir. 1994).
Like the aforementioned Plurk suit, this also was a copyright infringement lawsuit in which Apple Computer, Inc. tried to block both Microsoft Corporation and Hewlett-Packard from using or developing a visual graphical user interface that was similar to Apple’s Lisa and Macintosh operating systems.

This suit began in 1988 and lasted four years, then the appeal in 1994 and Apple’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court were both denied. Apple neglects to properly emphasize in my opinion how that the operating system was not even an idea before a visit to Xerox, and was considered technology that Xerox had no interest in pursuing. Imagine the possible lawsuit that could have ensued over that?

This year, Microsoft filed suit against TomTom over navigation systems in an eerily similar suit to the Apple Computer one previously noted. This time, Microsoft is the plaintiff.

Microsoft cites eight alleged patent infringements in the complaint; five  about portable navigation devices , and three over filesystem-management techniques. Some have made the observation that open-source protection could apply here to portions of the lawsuit but nothing substantive has come up.

Then in a surprising turn, Microsoft does what I feel is both a public service, and a long time coming; Microsoft filed suit against scareware manufacturers Soft Solutions, Direct Ad, qiweroqw.com,  and ITmeter INC in September.

These “scareware” or “malvertising” manufactures use techniques where code is placed in an online ad to either mislead the user or infect their computer with unknown code. The results range from  re-directing the user to a site that advertises rogue security software, or scareware, or even installing malicious coding such as a Trojan viruses, or a virus that can leave it open to remote control by a hacker. See here.

In my opinion, this suit has been a long time coming and after personally fixing dozens of victim’s machines, I hope this suit puts an end to this practice of what to me is basic terrorism.

Then just when it seems Microsoft has a nice warm seat in the plaintiff box, they were back to the defendant seat in March.

Microsoft settled a lawsuit regarding Halo and Xbox; both of which have been accused of out performing even movies in the the entertainment realm.  The lawsuit centers around patents which pertained to a “server-group messaging system for interactive applications” and “emptying packed data state during execution of packed data instructions.” The story is here.

This type of litigation is usually non-existent unless the payoff is there, and given the “cash cow” status of Halo and Xbox, this suit was bound to happen. Consider that usually frivolous lawsuits against Microsoft have been more along the “baseless” claim line, such as this one over the red ring of death.

Similarly,  Microsoft Word was ruled in violation of an XML-related patent by a Texas judge, who ordered Microsoft to stop selling its productivity suite and pay a small Canadian company, i4i, nearly $300 million.  August 2009 here.

Seeing the money change hands and being in and out of court so many times, what will become of Bing!?

A St. Louis firm has filed suit against Microsoft, over trademark rights to the “Bing!” name for the Microsoft  search engine.  Bing! Information Designs LLC filed suit against Microsoft in the 22nd Judicial Circuit of the Missouri Circuit Court in St. Louis charging Microsoft with trademark infringement and unfair competition.

St. Louis Bing!  maintains that it has been using the name in good faith since 2000, and clients of the St. Louis Bing! are victims of market confusion.

The suit does not specify “damages” of a dollar amount, as of yet, but they have requested that Microsoft pay for advertising to clear up the market confusion.

They may have been using the Bing! name for almost 10 years as they assert, but the St. Louis company only filed a trademark application in May well after Microsoft Bing! rumors. Further to the unconfirmed rumors, Microsoft filed a similar application in March for the Bing! trademark as well.

What does this do to Bing! if they lose?

Well, most likely they will pay a settlement and everything will be like before. But what would happen if there was some long-shot, unseen ripple effect that chops all the Bing! rankings down as a result of having to redo the search engine again?

Chances are that it is an impossibility, but I started thinking what would happen if everyone was served the equivalent of a “301 permanently moved” from Bing!?
Google rankings would, for the most part, be preserved from an in-house standpoint, but the effect that bing! has on ranking could be devastating.

I have been thinking about this for awhile now in the wake of an enforcement with regard to Yahoo! Answers and how those posts are ranked on Google. Granted this is a worst case scenario but isn’t that part of what we do in this industry?

My train of thought goes as follows:

All new sites would be treated the same as old sites, and no 302 “temporarily moved” benefits anywhere in sight. Sponsored link infringements would be at an all time high, phishing would be out of control and detection time would be seriously delayed. Corporate advertising, legal and marketing budgets would be hammered with trying to simply regain the lost ground and positioning.

As insane as this sounds and I know some readers will think I am crazy, one company is about to find out. Wall street Journal is going to block Google results, as part of a new strategy.

If losing a search engine was not voluntary and widespread however, the ramifications would most likely be devastating and the lawsuits exponential.

Until that day, Metamend has proven SEO solutions and to keep you safe from some of these lawsuits, and Metamend has a dedicated ORM department who can advise you with regard to your trademark infringements.

Stay safe this holiday season both online and offline!