The world’s largest computer software company, Microsoft, has lost a major patent case which will prevent it from marketing its successful DoubleSpace program in future software.
According to a report in the Washington Post, Microsoft Corporation, was ordered this week to pay Stac Electronics Inc $US120 million for patent infringement.
Microsoft said it would appeal the verdict. But in the meantime it will remove from its best-selling MS-DOS software the infringing “DoubleSpace” feature, which allows users to store nearly double the amount of data and programs on their hard disks.
DoubleSpace is only on DOS version six and later. People with these versions are unlikely to be affected.
The jury verdict came after a month-long trial.
The Stac version of DoubleSpace has been available separately for some time with other utilities, retailing in Australia for about $150. With the DOS version people got it free because they would have to buy DOS to get any IBM compatible computer to work.
The Washington Post reported that during the trial Stac successfully argued that in creating DoubleSpace, Microsoft had pirated two patents that Stac held. According to Microsoft, the jury found that this infringement was not intentional, but had nonetheless damaged Stac’s revenues.
Microsoft described the judgment as the largest ever against the company.
The jury ruled also, however, that Stac had illegally dissected certain Microsoft software to make Stac products compatible with it. Microsoft was awarded $13.6 million.
The Stac program, released in 1990, compresses data virtually instantaneously as it is saved to disk. It has meant that, for example, an 80 megabyte disk would store nearly 160 megabytes of data and programs. The cost of the program was much less than the difference in cost between an 80 and 160 megabyte disk. It made the program very attractive for users. Incorporated in Microsoft’s DOS 6 in March last year, it was a prime reason for users to upgrade from earlier versions of DOS, typically at a cost of between $100 and $150, especially as new programs and games were taking more and more disk space.
Since the feature became available in Microsoft DOS, Stac’s sales fell substantially. It was one of Stac’s main products.
During the trial, Stac said Microsoft had sought to licence the DoubleSpace technology, but no agreement had been reached.