Monday, February 7, 2005

Japanese software patents kill Word competitor


I can't summarize this any better than this
Slashdot poster: "The Tokyo District Court has ordered the destruction of Ichitaro, a software product that is the only serious competitor in Japan to Microsoft Word, and has been on sale since 1985. The ruling is based on the claim of a competitor, Matsushita, that the use of a help icon to invoke a help function infinges on one of their patents. 'We are a global enterprise and we are just following international practice to enforce our IP rights,' Kitadeya (Matsushita) said." Link (via /.)



posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:03:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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