Horacio Gutierrez, Corporate VP of Microsoft’s Intellectual Property Group came up with an idea that would help the software giant predict technology patent costs.  The idea was inspired by the book Moneyball, authored by Michael Lewis, who is also famous for the book Liar’s Poker.

The software would enable Microsoft to predict prices and the value of patents.  Microsoft would also be able to better forecast and budget IP costs.  Microsoft took a hit when a jury ruled that the software company infringed upon an MP3 patent that was owned by Alcatel-Lucent.  The jury ruled that Microsoft owed A-L $1.5 billion, but the decision was appealed and a settlement was reached.

In the book Moneyball, the Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane used an unorthodox approach to selecting baseball players while staying within an operating budget.

“While everybody was going through the discussion of talent selection the way they traditionally do it, which was with the old scouts who’ve been around the business for 50 years or so, saying ‘This kid’s got a good arm,’ ‘He looks like a ballplayer,’ and ‘He’s got a cannon,’ and all of these qualitative things, they started to have people come in and start to crunch numbers and realized that a lot of the things they were measuring, and taking as measures of success, were the wrong things,” stated Gutierrez.

“For example, does it really matter how many home runs a player hit in one year? Or how many runs the person actually helps score? If you just focus on home runs you could have someone who’s a disruption to the productivity of a team when he’s just focused on hitting home runs. Yet, everybody evaluates talent and pays for it based on how many home runs they hit,” added Gutierrez.

Guitierrez said that when he arrived at Microsoft, other employees would insist that the patents were high quality, but when you think about it, how often were the research papers cited and whether the objectives were measurable.

[via Sumner Lemon of IDG News Service]

Microsoft Corporation and GPS device company TomTom have settled the patent lawsuits that they have filed against each other.  Microsoft sued TomTom in late February and TomTom sued them back earlier this month.  Both companies were expected to just settle with each other rather than spend too much money on litigation battling each other.

As part of the agreement, TomTom will pay Microsoft for patent protection where related to mapping patents and file management patents.  Microsoft claimed that TomTom was infringing on the software giant’s use of the Linux kernel.  Microsoft will also receive access to TomTom’s patents that were referred to in the lawsuit against them.  Microsoft won’t make any payments to TomTom for using their patents.

This settlement has a five year term and TomTom will remove functionality related to Microsoft’s two file management system patents from their products over the next couple of years.  “We are pleased TomTom has chosen to resolve the litigation amicably by entering into a patent agreement,” stated Microsoft’s deputy general counsel Horacio Gutierrez.

[via CNET]

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has decided to file a lawsuit against TomTom today regarding the violation of in-car navigation services.  Microsoft believes that TomTom is violating 8 of their patents.  Three of these violations relate to the way that TomTom implemented the Linux kernel.  Using Linux isn’t the main point of the lawsuit, but it is more of the violation of using proprietary software.  Microsoft said that they filed the lawsuit out of last resort.

The case was filed in the U.S. District Court in Seattle and the International Trade Commission.  Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft’s corporate VP and deputy general counsel stated that this is the first time Microsoft has had this kind of lawsuit.  Both of the previous lawsuits were settled after they were filed.  Microsoft has had about 500 patent licensing deals made in the past 5 years.

“In exceptional cases such as this one, when a pragmatic business agreement cannot be reached, we feel that we really have no choice but to pursue legal action to protect our innovations and our partners who license them,” stated Gutierrez.  Microsoft has struck licensing deals with other in-car navigation services.  The company “remains open” to resolving the TomTom lawsuit quickly.

[via TechFlash]