A U.S. District judge has overturned a $388 million ruling against Microsoft. The ruling came on appeal in a six-year-old case launched against the software giant by Uniloc, a computer-security and copy-protection software company in Irvine, Calif.
Uniloc claimed victory over Microsoft in April after a federal court jury ordered Microsoft to pay the company $388 million in damages. At that time, the jury found that Microsoft willfully infringed on Uniloc’s U.S. Patent No. 5,490,216 covering technology that generates unique identities for licensed users and prevents unauthorized use or copying of software. Microsoft deployed the technology in Windows XP and Microsoft Office XP programs.
The Uniloc Physical Device Recognition (PDR) platform authenticates the identity of devices that attempt to access high-value technology assets. The patented method extracts the naturally occurring, inherent physical characteristics of the device to create a unique device fingerprint. Uniloc has applied the technology in several markets, including software and game security, identity management, and critical infrastructure security.
Dissecting Algorithm Differences
Judge William Smith heard Microsoft’s appeal in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island. His 66-page decision focused on the complex legal and technical issues and the difference between the MD5 and SHA-1 algorithms that Microsoft’s Product Activation system uses in Windows XP, Office XP, and Office 2004.
“A simple comparison of MD5 as a whole to the algorithm Uniloc’s patent discloses clearly reveals non-equivalence. While the existence of additional components or different steps does not per se preclude a structure from being considered substantially the same as another structure, the various non-additive mathematical operations in MD5 demonstrate significant (and undisputed) differences between MD5 and the summation algorithm in the ‘216 patent, which cannot be overstated,” the judge wrote.
Richard Koman, a litigator in Santa Rosa, Calif., isn’t surprised to see the case overturned. He said the case was…