sum1 doesnt know the meaning of "settles"

Why on earth did you report the story with worthless BS?

Jack said it best.

Lmao @ denied. My last Xbox 360 'denied' me from playing Mass Effect when it got the RROD HAHAHAHAHA!

OMG, MS must have known that the patent would have held up in court, for them to pay the money. Either that or they wanted to settle ASAP to make sure Halo ODST doesn't get tainted by the lawsuit.

0Oooo0oo....damn, M$ is paying people off left and right

This article doesn't actually state what MS ended up paying.. I bet it was way less than the asking price though..

Best to be the first to pay then the second,third or last. They had no chance of winning because they STOLE. They should have paid in the first place, and so should other companies. They are making money off of someone else's invention, and paid them nothing. This coming from companies that are themselves suing us for stealing? Hello! As a computer programmer I know it is EASY to prove coping. I can write a program, and tell you EXACTLY what it will do. And 1,000 other programmers can do the same, even though they do exactly the same thing, NONE WILL MATCH(have the same code)----NONE. That is with a simple program. This was complicated one! Even less chance of matching. They had no chance of winning. They should not win, own up, and pay! It is easier to get away with coping hardware then software. I said that they should pay when this store of the suit was first mentioned. That was fast! Where are all the people that dogged the inventors for wanting justice? Call them whiners huh? Why did they wait huh? Now you see why 90 Million smackers if they had done it on day one they would have gotten way less. And other companies would have made a concerted effort to change the code dramatically when coping. Now it is too late haha! Go mpath!

They should have had him mysteriously wind up dead. That would send a message to all of the patent squatters out there.

Oh f-ck off indysurfn. You have absolutely no idea on the broken hideous nature of American patent law, the whole system, especially regarding software patents is fundamentally broken. Ebay's "Buy it now" button was patented, and they had to fight for years, and eventually pay up out of court.

Because the cost of just paying the plaintiff is less costly than fighting your ground. From a pragmatic point of view it's easier for a firm to just offer up dirty money instead of seeking justice. Note how that this case was filed in East Texas district, because they have a history of awarding dubious claims to plaintiffs. Marshall, Texas, has an entire industry set up to cater for litigation, it's economy depends on it being plaintiff friendly. There's a conflict of interest there - http://www.nytimes.com/2006... http://www.technologyreview...

And if you're an IT professional, you should be familiar with The Register, the de-facto IT news standard. If you look at the tremendous amounts of trivial patents being fought over for ridiculous amounts of money, and think that software patents are a good thing, then something is seriously wrong. - http://www.google.co.uk/sea...

Maybe Microsoft did infringe on the patent. But no one will ever know, because the whole system is broken. Don't shoot your mouth off with crap like "MICROSOFT STOLE", when you have absolutely no idea of the bigger picture.

So you're saying big corporations like MS and Sony have the right to basically steal from smaller companies just because they can? I say let the courts decide who's right or wrong and how much is a reasonable payoff. With all of the money and attorney power MS has, it's obvious MS knew they were in the wrong. That's why they settled.

No mpath did not invent it but obviously the original inventors did not have enough money to sue Microsoft. So they bought it from the INVENTORS, thus the inventors got paid(finally). And usually you get a percent of a settlement plus a up front non refundable fee. So go mpath. I may have to use them one day!

This is an obvious case of a company trying to get money. We need a reform on the patent system. It is ridiculous when companies like amazon.com can get a patent on 1-click ordering.

Software patent shouldn't be on the result, but rather on the implementation. If the idea holder wants to patent it, let him come up with the multitude of ways to achieve this and document it.

yeah if a gun settled things who would want to invent? Let's see if I invent I will have to get in a dual and 50% get killed and the person that stole from me legally take all my money, invention, and maybe even my honey. NOT!

Why are you defending patent squatters? They never planned to do anything with their patent except wait to sue someone!