Patent infringement lawsuits are a rarely avoidable part of OEM technology companies’ fabrics, for their existence depends on coming up with and selling unique solutions. They also represent pitched battles that show off companies’ respective strengths to the audiences of customers and investors. The higher the stakes, the bigger the players, the nastier the fights.
Microsoft and Salesforce.com (News - Alert), which are dueling it out in the fast-growing B2B CRM marketplace have settled patent infringement cases brought by Microsoft before the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington and by Salesforce.com in the U.S. District Court of Delaware.
“The cases have been settled, says Microsoft (News - Alert), through a patent agreement in which Salesforce.com will receive broad coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for its products and services as well as its back-end server infrastructure during the term. Also as part of the agreement, Microsoft receives coverage under Salesforce.com’s patent portfolio for Microsoft’s products and services.”
“Although the contents of the agreement have not been disclosed, Microsoft indicated that it is being compensated by Salesforce.com based on the strength of Microsoft’s leading patent portfolio in the areas of operating systems, cloud services and customer relationship management software.”
“We are pleased to reach this agreement with Salesforce.com to put an end to the litigation between our two companies,” said Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing at Microsoft. “Microsoft’s patent portfolio is the strongest in the software industry and is the result of decades of software innovation. Today’s agreement is an example of how companies can compete vigorously in the marketplace while respecting each other’s intellectual property rights.”
The Seattle PI Microsoft Blog (the firm is headquartered in Redmond, northeast of Seattle) reported that Microsoft had sued Salesforce in May “alleging Salesforce.com’s online customer relationship management (CRM) service incorporates technology covered by nine Microsoft patents.
“In June, Salesforce.com fired back with its own lawsuit, enlisting the help of attorney David Boies, who represented the U.S. Department of Justice in its high-profile antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990s,” said the blog. In a separate story “Salesforce.com alleges Microsoft's .Net platform, SharePoint, Windows Server AppFabric, the Windows Error Reporting service and a Windows Live authentication system infringe five of its patents.”
The Seattle PI Blog thinks everyone is walking away happy.
"Salesforce.com is pleased to put this litigation behind us," company spokeswoman Jan Hynes told seattlepi.com Wednesday.
Until the next time…
Brendan B. Read is TMCnet’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by Stefania Viscusi