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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael F. Donadio who wrote (9807)	5/12/1998 5:56:00 PM
From: QwikSand	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

All: Put this one on your definitely must-read list. Even you, twister. zdnet.com Regards, --QwikSand

To: Michael F. Donadio who wrote (9807)	5/12/1998 11:54:00 PM
From: Retiarius	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

dare microsoft risk encouraging such massive copyright infringement? by comparison, sun's trademark claims were small potatoes; microsoft has already prepared for that by dropping the logo in response to the first injunction. it's hard to believe they wouldn't have contingency plans for this new, and extraordinarily serious charge. if win98 ships as is, and microsoft loses months or years later, their reserves and/or liability insurance must be something amazing to behold. in this case, depending how integrated into win98 the ersatz java is, it may be much easier to add the real thing than to subtract the bad bits, which might be as integrated as explorer. please remember that microsoft java is not clean room stuff, but technically a derivative work. the contract dispute here thus dwarfs the apple/microsoft windows 1.0 fight years ago. [aside: against apple microsoft prevailed over the copyright theory put forth by attorneys brown & bain (that the apple desktop was a copyrightable audiovisual work which survived evolution of the underlying code gifted openly to microsoft under contract). the court ruled that there was not substantial similarity of protectable expression, but not because of codebase differences.] here there is a contract dispute before possible infringement; a much better situation for the plaintiff to take an early lead. also note that the trademark injunction was granted partially because the judge saw that the damage to the smaller party could be greater than loss to the larger one. it's really best for microsoft to change those bits. oh, and if patents ever rear their head, it's treble damages...