If you haven’t been following this soap opera story, you might enjoy a few minutes on the plot. Tony Bishop’s blog’s has got a quick take on it that’s short and interesting.
The suit itself is not really relevant to the enterprise, but the mechanics of how Microsoft’s legal team works is worth pondering, given all the attention Microsoft is getting these days over Linux patents.
San Jose-based Immersion makes video-game controllers that vibrate to simulate the action on screen (make you literally feel like you’re there). In 2002 Immersion sued Microsoft and Sony. Microsoft settled but tucked in a shrewd little clause that said if Immersion also settled with Sony, it would get a chunk of its money back. On March 1, Immersion and Sony announced an agreement that looked like a settlement, smelled like a settlement and paid out like a settlement – some $22.5 million from Sony to Immersion, says the SEC filing, but wasn’t called a “settlement” by Immersion (fancy that!). So Immersion hasn’t paid back Microsoft and Microsoft isn’t happy about that. It claims Immersion owes it $27.5 million, other documents say.
So what? Microsoft is involved in goodness-knows-how many lawsuits and it is foolish to read too much into any one of them. But as the Linux crowd raised their fists last week in defiance proclaiming that Microsoft would never sue Linux customers, the thought can’t help but to surface. Does the Linux crowd get it? Perhaps the real threat isn’t that Microsoft will sue customers. It could be that Microsoft will sue Linux developers who don’t have the funds to fight back. Whatever anyone wants to call Microsoft and its legal team, “dumb” they aren’t.
