14 DAY TRIAL // In mid-May 2010, when Microsoft debuted legal action against Salesforce.com alleging willful intellectual-property violation, the options of the Redmond company’s CRM rival were extremely limited. And while the intellectual property dispute between the two companies could have dragged on for years, the two chose instead to settle their differences out of court. Microsoft and Salesforce.com announced on August 4 that they settled the patent infringement cases they had brought against one another, and established a new IP collaboration.
Microsoft has settled the patent infringement case before the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, while Salesforce.com also threw down its case in the U.S. District Court of Delaware. Moreover, the two companies have now entered into a patent agreement.
“We are pleased to reach this agreement with Salesforce.com to put an end to the litigation between our two companies,” revealed Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing at Microsoft. “Microsoft’s patent portfolio is the strongest in the software industry and is the result of decades of software innovation. Today’s agreement is an example of how companies can compete vigorously in the marketplace while respecting each other’s intellectual property rights.”
The exact details of the deal inked by the duo were not disclosed by either party. The financial aspects of the new patent agreement were also not made public, but this is nothing new for IP deals with Microsoft. However, the software giant did indicate that it is being compensated by Salesforce.com, although the exact sum of money remained undisclosed.
Per the agreement, Salesforce.com will be allowed access to Microsoft’s patent portfolio. The Redmond company revealed that the IP it will open to Salesforce.com involves both products and services, and even its back-end server infrastructure. However, Microsoft also wanted to make it clear that it was the overall strength of its IP portfolio that convinced Salesforce.com to settle, including in areas such as operating systems, cloud services and customer relationship management software.
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