Symantec Sues Microsoft Over Vista Tech

By Geoff Duncan Published June 19, 2018

Software developer Symantec, known for its security and utility software as well as swallowing up worthy businesses and software products, has filed suit against Microsoft in an effort to stop development and eventual sale of Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Vista operating system.

According to Symantec, Microsoft has misappropriated intellectual property which became Symantec’s when it bought security developer Veritas in 2004. The suit seeks financial damages and an injunction against the further development and eventual sale of Windows Vista until all Symantec intellectual property is removed from the operating system.

Recommended Videos

Symantec’s VolumeManager server management product is at the heart of the dispute: it enables server administrators to remotely monitor server status, as well as automate maintenance tasks and partition volumes. Microsoft licensed VolumeManager from Veritas in 1996 for eventual use in Windows 2000.

Symantec claims Microsoft never acquired a license to use the product in Windows Server 2003, and is therefore illegally competing with Symantec’s own Storage Foundation for Windows. Symantec says Microsoft is incorporating Symantec’s intellectual property into Windows Vista client and server products.

For its part, Microsoft characterizes the dispute as a "very narrow disagreement" over the terms of the 1996 contract, and claims it purchased the rights to Veritas’s code and intellectual property in 2004, prior to the company’s acquisition by Symantec.

One has to believe the companies tried to settle this issue before taking the matter to court; the open question is whether litigation might (further) delay the release of Windows Vista.

Former Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Computing

Google Earth’s AI misadventure lasted only a day. It was a tale of dangerous ignorance.

Nuclear reactors, tanks, and historical destruction on a life-like satellite map? Yeah, that's bad.

Nano Banana AI image generator representation.

Technology behemoths are clearly not reading the room, or they are just moving faster than they should when it comes to AI deployment. Google has already stuffed its Gemini AI in every corner of its software stack, from Android to daily productivity tools like Gmail that are used by hundreds of millions of users every day. AI is everywhere. Not all of it is bad, mind you. But in a few places, it just feels forced.

In its latest AI-fication experiment, the company targeted Google Earth. The idea was to let the audience use its Nano Banana 2 AI image generator and make images that can be placed on the map view. On paper, it's a cool idea. What would the Colosseum of Rome look like in your urban neighborhood? Yeah, fun stuff like that.

Computing

AMD is apparently gearing up to raise GPU prices right after Nvidia’s steep hike

AMD has reportedly told AIB partners about a price hike that goes into effect in. August.

AMD RX 7800

AMD is next in line to raise the asking price of its Radeon GPUs, merely days after the news of a similar hike coming for Nvidia graphics cards started making waves. As per ChannelGate on Weibo (h/t VideoCardz), AMD has informed its board partners that the price of GPU and memory bundles will go up by at least 10% in August.

Is a similar price hike coming for standalone graphics cards? I won't be surprised if that happens. The situation is so bad that AMD is planning to bring back graphics cards with 4GB of onboard memory. AMD just introduced the RX 9050 GPU, which costs $279. Notably, it's just $20 less than the RX 9060 XT that offers double the graphics memory.

Computing

Microsoft will make Windows work well with just 8GB RAM. We desperately need it

The dream of a reliable and affordable Windows laptop hinges on the next milestone at Microsoft.

Surface laptop on wooden table

The year 2026 has marked a huge course correction for Microsoft after years of frustrating users with plenty of confusing processes, unoptimized UI elements, and just the generous bloatware that can bring any Windows system to a crawl. Microsoft has finally shifted into a new phase. From fixing the right-click behavior to speeding up the Search system, the company has fixed plenty of papercuts.

The next major milestone is making Windows 11 run smoothly on Windows PCs with just 8GB of RAM. That directly means entry-level and budget laptops will at least get the basics right, even if that means sacrificing the on-device AI bells and whistles. Let's face it. The increasingly AI-first approach to computing on a Windows 11 machine is a little too taxing on the hardware at hand.