Is not generally well known but Microsoft stole the idea of product activation ( as used in Windows XP and more ) and copied the methodology of the activation parameters etc from the guy that invented and patented it . There was a big court case about it and appeals , it ended with Microsoft having to pay penalty of (I recall ) $250M USD . There is very brief info on this wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ric_Richardson

There is a much more detailed video by Ric RIchardson around I will see if I can find it and post the link .....

OK found the link. https://rss.com/podcasts/unemployable/1485621/

This link has blurb for another entrepreneur company, just ignore / skip that. There is a part where the inventor gives detailed info about the court battle with Microsoft and technical details of his product activation technology.

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asdefghyk 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

One other thing , if you want to know all the dodgy court cases Microsoft got involved in and the penalty's that had to pay- it will be mentioned / disclosed in their annual financial reports - since these large amounts , even possible amounts needed to be advised to shareholders in case /if/when they lost .....

I should add a party to the court case , disclosed the amount Cira $250M USD

even though in wikipedia says its not disclosed ....

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flomo 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They might have stolen the "patented method" (and i know how much u guys love patents), but they certainly did not steal the "idea". Software has had all sorts of horrible copy-protection for decades before this was introduced.

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asdefghyk an hour ago | parent [-]

In the quoted source from the inventor -the inventor mentions his disbelief that Microsoft used the exact same parameters (that the inventor used ) as determined from the PC - I think things like MAC address etc to uniquely id the machine

That's part of what I meant "... steal the idea ..."

Of course, the comment that there are lots copy protection methods ( previously ) is correct

THe inventor also had to spend cira about $15M in legal fees to bring his case. ANd that is many years ago 15-20? so a much bigger $ today. A small company would have no chance to be able to afford such a financial outlay ... Microsoft was often accused of obtaining information under NDA then developing their own similar product etc One case I recall was PEN computing. Pen Computing lost their case with the result "not proven" There where many more such cases, similar from smaller companies. Of course how many that where valid is unknown , since the court case often not go ahead, since small company not have resources ....

	▲	flomo an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Not listening to a blahcast, but shit like MAC addresses and other hardware IDs were well known to everyone in the field. Companies had 'inventory systems' which used this long before MS cared. I certainly don't begrudge anyone from getting their patented pound of flesh from Gates, just pointing out this is a great litmus test between the GNU and the not.

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blell an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wow wow wow... wait a moment... I thought HN agreed that the idea of software patents was ludicrous... what happened here that everybody agrees in this case that this was theft??

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4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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metadat 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The irony of stealing product activation is WOW :) welcome to capitalism.

	▲	apples_oranges 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		welcome to humanity: do as I say, not as I do

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2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]