Australian software developer and inventor Ric Richardson has lost a US court battle against software giant Microsoft, after the judge decided against a jury’s finding he should receive $445 million in damages.
Richardson, who founded tech company Uniloc but no longer serves as director, sued Microsoft in 2003 over an alleged patent violation regarding software that is designed to prevent piracy. According to Richardson, Microsoft has allegedly used the technology to earn billions of dollars.
Uniloc achieved an early victory in April when a Rhode Island jury found Microsoft violated Richardson’s patent, and ordered the company to pay $US388 million in one of the largest patent awards in the country’s history.
But US District Judge William Smith earlier this week “vacated” the verdict and instead ruled in favour of Microsoft, who defended its technology on the basis that its version was far different from Richardson’s.
Smith said in his finding the jury “lacked a grasp of the issues before it and reached a finding without a legally sufficient basis”.
“It’s such a shock that I really have to have my lawyers unravel this mess for me,” Richardson told The Age. “It was never about the money. It was about the ethics of it… winning a court case is not winning the lottery.”
In a previous case in 2006, a judge ruled in favour of Microsoft but the decision was overturned on appeal on the grounds there was a “genuine issue of material fact”.
The technology was designed by Richardson when working as an equipment officer for rock group INXS. Part of his job required Richardson to buy expensive programming software, but he was frustrated by the inability to try the programs before purchase.
He then developed a technology by which users download the software, but must pay for a key-code that will unlock the software’s full abilities. The technology is now a standard, with Microsoft using key-codes in the Microsoft Office suite and even the popular Windows XP operating system.
Richardson says he showed the software to Microsoft in 1993 but the company did not license it, instead introducing its own version by 1997.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
