So they did disclose them? No doubt under pressure from B&N. If you look at those patents, you'll see that they are bizarrely trivial. Such things should never be patentable in the first place. Surely invalidating them can be not so easy, but it can be possible. It's one of the reasons why MS attempts to push NDAs as much as possible (we are lucky this was disclosed in those cases). Probably only a minority of their patents are non trivial, and most of these racket attacks are based on these kind of junk patents.
> If you look at those patents, you'll see that they are bizarrely trivial.
They may or may not be trivial, but I've only known the patent numbers for an hour, and you only knew them for 15 minutes when you posted--and it is not possible to have read them in sufficient detail to make such a judgement in that time.
To find out what a patent actually covers you have to read more than just the title and the abstract. The title and abstract are mostly useful for determining what a patent does not cover rather than determining what it covers.
The title just tells you the broad area the patent is in, and the abstract narrows that down a bit, but both will cover a lot of ground. That's why they are most useful for exclusion, not inclusion.
To find out what the patent actually covers, it is the claims that matter. The claims are interpreted in light of the specification, so you must read that to understand the claims.
For instance, a patent might have a title of "Acoustic Repelling of Mosquitoes", which seems really broad, but when you read the specification and claims, it might turn out that the patent only applies when the mosquitoes are a specific species, exactly three sound generators are being used, they are arranged in an equilateral triangle, the temperature is above 95F, and it is daylight.
(Actually, to really tell what is covered, you need to check the file for the patent from the patent office. The examiner and the applicant often go back and forth arguing over whether a claim should be allowed. The arguments and concessions the applicant makes to convince the examiner to allow the claim become limits on the claim).
Hmm, since we're on the topic, and IIRC you have experience in these matters, could you take a quick look at this comment of mine, and let me know if my take on it is inaccurate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540902
Essentially, I looked at B&N's reply to Microsoft's complaint and it looked really weak to me. I wanted to know if my evaluation is wrong.
As an aside, the whole thread above that comment is pretty similar to this subthread.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I only went about 98% of the way through law school (I decided I'd rather be a programmer who knew a fair amount of law than a lawyer who knew a lot about programming, and never got around to completing a paper for my last class). I did get a close look at the whole patent suit process later, when a patent that I am a co-inventor on ended up involved in a lawsuit (not of my choice or with my approval), so I got to be deposed a couple times, answer a lot of questions from lawyers, and spend a month living in an annoying hotel in Texas for the trial, and while there got to talk a lot with the lawyers. If an actual lawyer steps in here to answer, take whatever they say over whatever I say.
OK, now that the disclaimer is done (and is longer than my answer, which will probably make people doubt my claim to not be a lawyer!), it looks to me like your take is accurate. Their answer does not give much detail.
Your speculation in the last paragraph, that this is normal for answers to complaints, is also correct I believe. The complaint and answer are not where the parties start to argue the case. The complaint is to tell the court what wrong you think was done to you, and why you think the court has jurisdiction over the defendant and over the subject matter.
The answer is to tell the court which things in the complaint that you concede are true, which you claim are false, and which you cannot answer at this time because you do not have enough information.
Basically, the complaint and answer together let the court know what it is dealing with.
The meaty details start coming in when the suit gets to the stage where the parties are filing pre-trial motions for things like summary judgement on various parts of the complaint, and later when the trial actually gets underway.
Ahh, that is very helpful, thanks. So my evaluation of their answer was premature, but I guess no more premature than those who would take it as an indication that "B&N sure showed Microsoft".
