Microsoft's data crunching baby hit with lawsuit

Datallegro, a data warehouse maker in the midst of being acquired by Microsoft, has received a lawsuit, claiming that Datallegro's current CEO aided the company in infringing on a key patent. Cary Jardin filed the lawsuit in a Southern California district court, alleging the abuse of a patent related to a "system and method …

[James Butler]

Crystal Ball

What do I see, floating through the mists ... ?

Ahh ... there's Microsoft, continuing their efforts to buy Datallegro.

Ohhh ... they've done it! Datallegro is being absorbed ...

Ahh ... that pesky lawsuit is still milling about.

Ohhh ... Microsoft agrees to a puny licensing deal with Jardin.

Ahh ... next-gen Datallegro to be called "ClusterF**k".

Ohhh ... original license deal is kaput ... no more Datallegro ... no more licensing.

Poof! Problem solved in classic Microsoft fashion.

[Danger Mouse]

I'm worried

I hope none of the owners of previous firms I've worked for have patented 'Golf Fridays', 'cheating on your wife with the company bike Tuesdays' or 'fabricating revenue Wednesdays'. If they have then the guy I'm working for at the moment will is in serious stook.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm ...

Is this a wise acquisition on MicroSoft's part? The only thing the name Datallegro puts me in mind of is a certain, diabolically bad, car from the 1970's:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Allegro

(mines the ones with the keys on a British Leyland keyfob in the inside pocket)

[Matt Thornton]

@Big Chris

I had the same thought - but was thinking it was marginally better than Datamontego. Although Datamaestro (with optional !) has a certain ring to it. I might fire off a quick patent and hope someone buys me out so I can sue them. Or something.

[Geoff Mackenzie]

Software patents

What a good idea.

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

How can you patent ...

a "system and method for generating and processing results data in a distributed system." ?????

We been doing something like that FOR YEARS and along comes some guy who says: Ghosh, let's patent the wheel for a change

USPTO: Please get your act together and LOOK UP PRIOR ART!

[Gerrit Hoekstra]

Ah yes, the morass of Software Patents...

Yet another scheme to scale data over multiple devices may well be a nifty piece of design but what could possibly have been the Inventive Step(s) to make such a scheme even patentable? One suspects that this is just rehashed old ideas.

I wonder that the big players in this arena like Terradata have to say about their prior art on this matter?

Mine's the one with lawyers' business cards in the pocket - they are are only ones who gain from Software Patents

[Daniel B.]

I smell patent troll

Oh great. Another patent troll? What's next, a "system for storing data as an abstraction of columns and rows", followed by lawsuits against IBM for DB2, Oracle and Microsoft (SQL Server) ???

These software patents are getting stupider every day.

[Stuart Frost]

DATAllegro

Thanks for the car jokes guys... I'm a Brit myself and have 'fond' memories of the Austin All-aggro.

Interesting comments also on the patent validity. The prior art is clearly very strong and long established in this area. I'll leave it at that for now.

Stuart Frost

CEO, DATAllegro