Microsoft sued by Emblaze over Streaming Media Technology

On Friday, October 19, 2012, Emblaze Ltd. (plaintiff) launched a suit against a software giant Microsoft Corporation (defendant) for infringement in the U.S. District Court of Northern California (case no. 3:12-cv-05422).

Emblaze is in the business of developing and marketing high-tech technologies and products. Emblaze was incorporated under the name of GEO International Computer Based Training Ltd. in 1994. Microsoft develops, manufactures, licenses and supports a wide range of products and services related to computing.

The patent US6389473 involved in this suit is currently assigned[*] to Emblaze Ltd. The patent entitled Network media streaming was issued on May 14, 2002 and expires[†] on March 24, 2018. The patent covers a method for real-time broadcasting from a transmitting computer to one or more client computers over a network.

According to the complaint, the defendant’s products XBox 360 (see fig.1) and devices running on Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows phone 7.0 Operating Systems, to view live smooth streaming multimedia content, IIS Computers, Windows Azure Servers infringe the patent US6389473.

Fig.1 XBox 360

The plaintiff has filed similar suits (1:10-cv-05713 and 5:11-cv-01079) against Apple, Inc. on July 2010, claiming that the iPhone maker’s HTTP live streaming application, used on iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and Mac OS X infringed its patent for streaming technology.

For more details, visit MaxVal-IP and subscribe to our Litigation Alerts.

---

[*]Maxval offers Patent Assignment Alert service where subscribers receive email alerts when assignments relating to target applications, patents or entities of interest are recorded.

[†]Expected Expiration Date. Patent Term Estimator is a free web-based tool that automatically calculates patent terms and expiration dates for U.S. utility patents.