Patent Troll Seeks Billions of Dollars From Microsoft Azure

Noted patent troll Bernhard Frohwitter has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and is seeking billions of dollars in damages. He’s doing so on behalf of ParTec, a German technology firm for which he is now the CEO.

“ParTec holds approximately 150 patents related to supercomputer and quantum computing architectures,” ip fray’s Florian Mueller explains. “Thus far, there has not been a noteworthy patent assertion against AI systems (Large Language Models) at the software level. ParTec v. Microsoft targets cloud infrastructure that is used (among other things) for AI purposes. Earlier this year, Google settled a multi-billion-dollar case brought by Singular over two patents targeting high-performance processors.”

Mr. Frohwitter is the founder of IPCom, which purchased a key mobile industry patent and then proceeded to sue every major player in that industry–Apple, HTC, Nokia, many others–over a 13-year period, winning billions in damages. He’s assisted in this effort by Susman Godfrey, a commercial plaintiffs attorney and the founding partner of Susman Godfrey LLP. Godfrey is representing The New York Times in its lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, and he recently settled a voting machine fraud lawsuit against Fox News. And he is now representing ParTec.

“A company as small as ParTec almost certainly could not afford Susman’s services without a contingency arrangement,” Mueller notes.

Among the many patents in ParTec v. Microsoft are a “computer cluster arrangement for processing a computation task and method for operation thereof” and an “application runtime determined dynamical allocation of heterogeneous compute resources.” But the core dispute is for something called a dynamic modular system architecture (dMSA) that ParTec developed and uses worldwide in the construction of powerful leading-edge AI-supercomputers. The lawsuit seeks an injunction against Microsoft, license fees, and compensation for damages.

“Microsoft is infringing our intellectual property with its wave of AI supercomputers as part of their cloud computing platform Azure,” Mr. Frohwitter says. “We have therefore decided to file a lawsuit in Texas, USA.”

According to Mueller, the resulting trial could take place as soon as 2025. “Multi-billion-dollar damages verdicts are typically not upheld on appeal, and if the case settles, the amount is going to be closer to a weighted average of different possible outcomes,” he notes.