Burst.com Files Patent & Antitrust Lawsuit Against Microsoft’s ‘Corona’
Reprinted from a Burst.com press release:
Santa Rosa, CA, June 19, 2002: Burst.com, Inc. Chairman & CEO Richard Lang today announced that Burst.com has filed a lawsuit accusing software giant Microsoft Corporation of violations of the Patent Act, Sherman Act Sections 1 & 2, California Cartwright Act (anti-trust), California Business & Professions Code Section 17200 (unfair acts or practices), the California Trade Secrets Act and for breach of contract. Burst.com is being represented in the action by San Francisco law firm Hosie, Frost, Large & McArthur; and Palo Alto intellectual property law firm Carr-Ferrell, LLP.
In the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Tuesday, June 18th, Burst alleges that:
1. Microsoft’s newly announced “Corona” product uses technologies and
trade secrets misappropriated from Burst.com. These proprietary technologies are protected by numerous U.S. and International patents (and patents pending). Microsoft met with Burst over a two-year period and negotiated unsuccessfully for the rights to use Burst’s innovative technology.
2. Microsoft anticompetitively damaged Burst in violation of federal and state antitrust laws in many of the same ways that prompted the federal courts to find that it monopolized the market for Intel-compatible operating systems.
Lang claims that Burst technology is essential to Microsoft, because it enables high quality video-on-demand over the Internet, which is key to Microsoft’s .NET strategy via Windows Media Platform applications. “Microsoft clearly sees high-quality video and audio delivery as their ticket into dominating the Internet-video enabled set-top box market, as well as the Internet appliance market,” said Lang. “Burstware is the ‘3rd generation streaming’ technology that Microsoft has been bragging about as if it was their own.”
Burst currently licenses Burstware, its faster-than-real-time streaming media delivery platform. The company believes this innovative technology could one day become the standard for Internet-based video-on-demand.
“We spent over a decade patenting and developing burst technology in anticipation of the markets that are now emerging.” said Lang. “Microsoft’s operating system monopoly put it in the position to simply take our technology and our business opportunities. Microsoft has found that it pays to misappropriate the innovations created by others. We’re asking the court to prevent that from happening here.”