When the little guy wins

Australian innovator Ric Richardson and Uniloc settle with Microsoft

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Australian entrepreneur Ric Richardson has finally won his patent dispute with Microsoft over the use of software protection software.

In a post on his personal blog, Ric declared “it’s over!” and said;

“It’s kind of like having your career anchored on a test you did when you were a kid and someone questioning your score decades after the fact… all you can do is stick to your position and hope the truth rings true.”

After winning a three hundred million dollar award against Microsoft, then an appeal striking down the size of the damages it’s been a hell of journey for Ric and Uniloc.

The silly thing is for Microsoft they largely abandoned this method of validating software after 2003, so they could have settled this a lot earlier. Or just paid the license fees in the first case.

You also can’t avoid the irony of Microsoft being successfully sued over a product design to protect intellectual property.

It’s always good to see the entrepreneur and inventor get up in a world that often seems tilted in favour of the corporations.

Now we can look forward to seeing a lot more innovations out of Ric’s caravan, that flat tyre detector looks really useful.

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Author: Paul Wallbank

Paul Wallbank is a speaker and writer charting how technology is changing society and business. Paul has four regular technology advice radio programs on ABC, a weekly column on the smartcompany.com.au website and has published seven books.

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