Sunday, December 1, 2013

Court Issues Judgment Favoring Microsoft, Adobe over TriStrata Multicast Key Management Patents

Case Filed: Aug 01, 2011

Case Closed: Nov 25, 2013

Case Duration: 847 Days

Court: California Northern District Court

Judge: Jon S. Tigar

Case Summary:
Microsoft was sued by TriStrata, which develops software to secure information for computer based businesses.  The suit also included Adobe as another defendant and was filed accusing defendants’ products use the methods/processes claimed in the patents-in-suit. The patents involved in the suit were: US7257706 and US7743249 both entitled ‘Method of securing a document in a system and controlling access to the document and a seal for use in the method’ issued on Aug 14, 2007 and Jun 22, 2010, respectively. The patents expire[i] by Aug 09, 2019 and are assigned to TriStrata (as per the face page).

Martin Atalla, the founder of TriStrata is also one the inventors of the ‘706 and ‘249 patents. The patents relate to secure communications and in particular to systems and methods for multicast key management.

The complaint accused Microsoft for its distribution of Windows Server and Client products and Office applications software and Adobe for selling LiveCycle Right Management ES and Flash Media Rights Management Server software. It said defendants infringed the patents by selling products/software using methods/processes for digital information transfer as claimed in the patents-in-suit.

On Nov 15, parties agreed that the accused Microsoft and Adobe products do not infringe the ‘706 and ‘249 patents as alleged by TriStrata and filed a joint stipulation for entry of final judgment. Upon consideration of the stipulation filed, the Court signed off the final judgment on Nov 22 in favor of Microsoft and Adobe and ordered the counterclaims to be dismissed without prejudice.

See 3:11-cv-03797 for more details. To get alerts on cases filed/closed, subscribe to our Litigation Alerts.

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[i] 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.

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