02/23/19 HAVE PATENT, WILL SUE MICROSOFT

HAVE PATENT, WILL SUE MICROSOFT

PITY POOR MICROSOFT. AS IF fighting tooth and claw with giants such as the Justice Dept. weren't enough, it's being nibbled by ducks, too.
Worse, here's a nibble that may turn out to be a nasty bite. Martin Reiffin, amateur inventor and retired IBM patent attorney, has filed suit in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., charging Microsoft with infringing on two key patents that cover a chore called preemptive multi-threading, which enables operating-system software to do more than one task at a time. Reiffin was granted the patents in December, after 15 years of rejections.
Reiffin may have a case. Patent litigator Alan Fisch of Howrey & Simon in Washington, D.C., says this could be a tricky suit, since software patents weren't issued prior to the early '80s. To beat Reiffin, Fisch says, Microsoft might have to spend $1 million to $2 million ''to find an obscure computer-science PhD paper that might have proposed this idea.'' But losing would force it to use other technology or pay Reiffin.
Microsoft says that it is studying Reiffin's claim. However, since the disputed code is in wide use, why was just Microsoft targeted? Quips Reiffin: ''As Willie Sutton said, you go where the money is.''
EDITED BY ROBERT McNATT & LARRY LIGHT
Steve Hamm