Writs To Make Lawyers Richer
Sydney Morning Herald
Sunday August 28, 1988
THE WORLD of computer litigation rolls on, bringing gladness to the hearts of lawyers and sadness to the rest of us. Latest news from the legal front:
* In San Jose, California, venue of choice for computer litigants, Advanced Micro Devices has filed a suit claiming patent infringements against four other manufacturers of chips: Cypress, Gazelle, Atmel and Samsung. The quartet is accused of copying parts of the AMD logic chip. Last week we reported that Cypress was being sued by National Semiconductor for trade secret theft.
* Microsoft, one of the co-defendants in the Macintosh look and feel case, has settled a suit against Master Systems which had allegedly copied the MS-Dos operating system and put it on to computers sold through retail stores. Kym Ratliff, president of Master Systems, expressed regret over his company's activities. "This lawsuit has been a real eye opener," he said. "We had not realised how serious the consequences of copyright infringement can be."
No details available about how much cash changed hands.
* In Houston, Texas Air has made a formal complaint to the Department of Transportation alleging that United Airlines and American Airlines are working together to hammer the Texas Air reservation system and drive it out of the market. Texas Air alleges that the opposing systems "are purposely designed not to provide consistently reliable information about other carriers ... the systems are designed to make it either very difficult or impossible to find out flight or seat availability of competing airlines". As a result, travel agents tend to book passengers on American or United. Note that United is currently suing Japan Airlines for something allegedly very similar.
* In Canada, Kinburn, a major software company, is having a bit of a name problem. A subsidiary company in the United States is called Geovision. Sadly, that is also the name of a companythat started about the same time. And both companies are in the same line of business - putting maps and information on to CD-Rom discs. Judging by the relaxed attitude of both parties, this dispute may well be settled out of court providing they keep both sets of lawyers well hosed down.
* In New Mexico, the operator of a bulletin board, William A. Christison, has sued a user for loading a virus on to the bulletin board system run by Christison. The accused is the oddly named Michael Dagg. It is alleged he loaded on to the bulletin board a virus program called BBSMON.COM - and that he knew it was poison when he loaded it.
The defendant allegedly logged on to the board nine more times between May 5 and May 12, sometimes using a pseudonym and, on May 7, the suit says, "he knowingly and intentionally sent inby modem a program of the same name, BBSMON.COM, as the original 'Trojan horse' computer program".
Christison seeks $1,000 penalty for each Trojan horse violation and asks the court to prohibit Mr Dagg "from sending 'Trojan horses' or 'viruses' or other vandalizing programs to the plaintiff or anyone else".
© 1988 Sydney Morning Herald