Corel Manages To Accuse A Totally Legit Customer Of Piracy

from the oops dept

While piracy and ways to combat it may be weighing heavily on the minds of many a software producer, it's quite unfortunate that more of them don't consider conversely how their anti-piracy efforts will impact their legit customers. You can see this sort of thing all over the place in the software world, most prominently when it comes to DRM, which tends to stop almost no piracy but manages to annoy legit customers.

But DRM isn't the only method out there for combating piracy. Corel came up with a patented approach that detects pirated versions of its software and attempts to get the pirate to pay up.

Earlier this year we reported on Corel’s efforts in this space after the company obtained a patent for a system which is able to offer an amnesty to illegal users via a popup.

“The amnesty offer may, for example, agree not to bring criminal charges in exchange for the user purchasing a legitimate copy of the product,” Corel’s patent reads. “In this manner, the user of the pirated version is given the opportunity to purchase a legitimate copy which, if acted on, increases revenue for the manufacturer.”

It's not the worst strategy in the world, even if it harkens back somewhat to those copyright troll threat letters that have been on the rise for the past few years. Still, if the system can accurately detect a pirated copy of the software, and if the messaging requesting payment isn't too heavy-handed, it's not a bad way to try to reach out to pirates for payment.

But what if it isn't so accurate? And what if legit customers are suddenly told they're pirates? And what if Corel then treats that person with something less than a full mea culpa? This all already happened, of course.

Earlier this week, TorrentFreak was contacted by an angry Corel customer who was witnessing first hand what can happen when a piracy detection system blows a fuse.

“I am a valid and licensed user and Corel support has records of my license key and right to use this software on my work PC,” he told us.

The user got a popup accuses him of using "illegal" software before requesting payment, at a discounted rate no less. His Corel software, used at his place of work, was also disabled. Suddenly, this user couldn't get access to his or her work product, all because Corel's anti-piracy system crapped the bed and called a customer a pirate. After a lengthy back and forth -- the user was unable to operate for at least a full day -- Corel managed to correct the issue, albeit in a manner totally opaque to the end user. The customer has no idea if his software is now correctly licensed, if he got a new license, or if Corel just put him on some whitelist so as not issue more threats.

Oh, and Corel also hasn't bothered to apologize.

“I’m not sure how [the steps Corel took] corrected my license issue or if it just took me off the ‘hit list’ of victims of what I still feel was some kind of scam. Still no apology from Corel for the problems caused or the delays it forced on me,” he added.

Reached for comment, a Corel rep made a great deal of noise about unlicensed resellers causing all of these problems. TorrentFreak went back to the affected user to ask where he had bought his copy of the software. The answer? Corel's website. This was verified by a review of the purchase receipt. After all of this, Corel finally relented and, I suppose as something of an apology, offered the customer a 5% discount on future purchases.

“I want to ask them if that 5% is good for Photoshop,” the customer commented dryly.

And that really should tell you everything you need to know about the dangers of a crappy anti-piracy system annoying your customers.

Filed Under: copyright, drm, piracy
Companies: corel

Stupid Patent Of The Month: Microsoft's Design Patent On A Slider

from the if-only-it-had-rounded-corners dept

For the first time ever, this month's Stupid Patent of the Month is being awarded to a design patent. Microsoft recently sued Corel for, among other things, infringing its patent on a slider, D554,140, claiming that Corel Home Office has infringed Microsoft's design.

The design patent, as detailed by Microsoft in its complaint, is titled "User Interface for a Portion of a Display Screen" and entitles Microsoft to own this:

More specifically, Microsoft claims to own this design of a slider.

Design patents aren't like the utility patents that most people think of when they think of patents. Unlike utility patents, which are meant for new and useful inventions, design patents are meant for new, non-functional, ornamental aspects of articles. They have only one claim, little to no written description, and usually a series of images detailing what exactly is being claimed. (A note about design patents: solid lines are used to show what is claimed; broken or dotted lines show the unclaimed "environment related to the design" or define the boundary of the design.)

As Professor Sarah Burstein points out on her fantastic Tumblr, design patents are often issued on a small part of a product, and often for things that seem unoriginal, not ornamental, or just ridiculous.

Microsoft's patent claims against Corel are unsurprising in light of how much money is potentially at stake. If Corel is found to infringe even one of Microsoft's design patents through even the smallest part of Corel Home Office, current Federal Circuit law entitles Microsoft to all of Corel's profits for the entire product. Not the profits that can be attributed to the design. Not the value that the design adds to a product. All of the profit from Corel Home Office.

The well-known Apple v. Samsung dispute addressed the issue of whether an infringer should be required to pay all of its profits for infringing a design patent that applies only to a portion of a product. Samsung had asked the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to reject this reading, but the court disagreed in a May, 2015 opinion.

Samsung has now asked the Supreme Court to weigh in. In its petition for certiorari, Samsung points out the absurd results of this rule. For example, Samsung explains that under the Federal Circuit's ruling, "profits on an entire car—or even an eighteen-wheel tractor trailer—must be awarded based on an undetachable infringing cup-holder." In addition, given that many products will include multiple ornamental features that could be covered by design patents, this raises the possibility that a company could get hit for multiple judgments for all its profits.

That sounds pretty crazy to us. But that's exactly what might happen if Microsoft prevails against Corel. Putting aside whether Microsoft's design was actually new and not obvious in 2006 (when Microsoft filed its application), whether Microsoft needed the patent incentive in order to come up with this design, and whether it is even desirable to grant a company a government-backed monopoly on a graphical slider (we don't think so, that's why this is a stupid patent), the scope of damages for design patent infringement has the potential to become a powerful tool to shut down legitimate competition based on the mere threat of a lawsuit.

Reposted from the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Filed Under: damages, design patent, patents, slider, stupid patent of the month
Companies: corel, microsoft

Tons Of Companies Sued Over Broad Patent On Controlling Workstations In A Computer Network

from the sue,-sue,-sue,-sue dept

As we keep waiting for a Supreme Court ruling in the Bilski case (any day now...), Glyn Moody points us to the news of a lawsuit that has been filed against 26 different software companies for violating an incredibly broad patent (5,832,511) on "Workgroup network manager for controlling the operation of workstations within the computer network" (say that 10 times fast). The list of companies sued is a who's who in software:

Apple, Activision, Adobe, Autodesk, Capcom, Citrix, Corel, Dassault, Delcam, Square Enix, Electronic Arts, Frontrange Solutions, IBM, Intuit, Konami, Digital Entertainment, Maximizer Software, Nuance, Parametric Technology, Sage Software, Sega, Skype, SPSS, Teradata, THQ and Legacy Interactive

I'm sure none of those companies could have possibly come up with a system for controlling the operation of workstations within a computer network without this patent. At some point, isn't the fact that such a vast number of companies appear to have come up with the same basic thing independently a perfect prima facie case of obviousness?

Filed Under: patent, remote computers, workstations
Companies: activision, adobe, apple, autodesk, citrix, corel, ea, ibm, intuit, konami, nuance, sega, skype, spss, square enix, teradata

Secretive Patent Holder Sues Lots Of Companies For Remote Activation Software

from the gotta-get-it-done-before-bilski dept

Brian points us to the news of yet another questionable patent lawsuit filed by yet another shell company, yet again in Eastern Texas against a ton of software companies. The patent in question (5,222,134) is for a "secure system for activating personal computer software at remote locations," and was originally filed back in 1991 and granted in 1993 -- meaning that the patent is actually nearing end of life. Odd, then, that it was suddenly noticed that all these companies were infringing. The lawsuit is filed by a shell company called BetaNet, and no one seems willing to speak. The lawyers representing BetaNet won't say who is behind the company, or how they even got the patent. This is typical. Many of these types of lawsuits are filed by shell companies to hide who is actually behind them. As for the defendants, here's the list:

Adobe, Apple, Arial Software, Autodesk, Carbonite, Corel, Kodak, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, McAfee, Online Holdings, Oracle, Rockwell, Rosetta Stone, SAP, Siemens, and Sony.

Obviously, none of those companies could have come up with ways to remotely activate software without this patent (yes, that's sarcasm). As the Register notes in the link above, even some of the software products listed as violating this patent don't seem to involve activation at all, raising serious questions about how they could possibly violate this patent. This sounds like yet another case of someone having read the book Rembrandt's in the Attic and deciding to go trolling for companies to sue with a meaningless patent.

Filed Under: activation, east texas, patents, software
Companies: adobe, apple, arial software, autodesk, betanet, carbonite, corel, ibm, intuit, kodak, mcafee, microsoft, online holdings, oracle, rockwell, rosetta stone, sap, siemens, sony