• silicon.com
• Management
• CIO Insights

By editorial@silicon.com, 11 January 2001 09:00

COMMENT Mircosoft, clearly sick of 'hostile' judges and their 'draconian' rulings, was keen to avoid another day in court. Expedia, the travel site it owns, may have legitimately deployed a business process that Priceline has a spurious hold over, but Microsoft concluded that a regular licence fee is a price worth paying for a low-profile end to a dispute already 15 months old. Priceline, meanwhile, is not the force it once was and while a precedent-setting court case probably appealed a year ago (pre-slump), today a quick fix and a deal with Microsoft is the best bet. And by conducting this deal outside the courts, Priceline still has the option to take future patent infringers to task. What makes the agreement a curious one is the size of the licence fee agreed. Specifics are a closely guarded secret but a joint-statement issued today said the deal would have little "material impact" on either company. Priceline, it would seem, has sold itself short. This suggests one thing - it was keener than we thought to reach a settlement. This is a company, remember, that has seen its share price fall from a post-float high of $162 to $1.18 earlier this week. It has also lost a number of senior executives - including founder and vice chairman, Jay Walker - and has embarked on some serious cost cutting, and PR-unfriendly job cutting. So Priceline will not profit unduly for its opportunism. For those - silicon.com among them - who believe the patenting of business processes is undesirable in the innovative world of dot-coms, this at least is a satisfactory end to an unsatisfactory episode. For related news see:
Microsoft coughs up in Priceline patent claim
http://www.silicon.com/a36934
Nothing new: patenting the online world
http://www.silicon.com/a36934
US patent law attacks cyberspace
http://www.silicon.com/a36842
Business methods that are patently ridiculous
http://www.silicon.com/a36823