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A Quick $200 Million

Want to get rich fast? Forget the lottery or American Idol. Just get a patent that Microsoft infringes upon!

VirtnetX has such a patent and Microsoft just shelled out a cool $200 million to settle the case. The patent involved Virtual Private Networks (VPN), an area Microsoft is pushing with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Actually the opposite is true: With this combo you can set up secure private connections without a VPN.

In fact, the offending Microsoft products are generally far older, and include XP, Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Office Communicator.

Microsoft licensed VirtnetX technology, so as Pete Townshend said, "We won't get sued again."

Posted by Doug Barney on May 19, 2010


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