Microsoft settles differences with Alacritech

Microsoft settles differences with Alacritech

It is peacetime for Microsoft again as they settle their differences with yet another company after doing so with old foes like Sun Microsystems and IBM. The latest settlement comes with networking company over the disputes on the networking technology the software giant plans in the future versions of their operating systems. Alacritech had sued Microsoft last year claiming that they were infringing on their patents.

The dispute was related to the technology codenamed “Chimney” developed by Microsoft. Alacritech on their part claimed that Microsoft stole their concepts and broke the intellectual property laws. They had In fact won a preliminary injunction in April that temporarily blocked Microsoft from implementing this technology in their products. The company has plans to incorporate Chimney in their updated versions of the Windows Server editions and the next generation operating systems for the consumers codenamed Longhorn.

Microsoft said in a statement about this settlement: “Today’s announcement ensures that Microsoft customers and partners will be able to realize improved application, server, and network performance with Windows Server 2003. As part of this agreement, we have resolved all outstanding litigation with Alacritech.”

The interesting part of this news is that neither of the companies has revealed details of the settlement including the financial transactions to take place between these two companies. However, what is clear is that Alacritech got some access to certain patented networking technology from Microsoft.

Microsoft Chimney technology is a program to support hardware that accelerates networking using the Internet’s TCP/IP standard.