Stac Electronics
Stac Electronics was a company in the computer industry, which was founded in 1984 by four students from the California Institute of Caltech and dissolved in 2002. A name Stac Electronics made in particular by backup solutions, but also in development of algorithms of data compression. The most famous product of Stac Electronics Stacker was, a data compression program, which was launched in 1990 to market and the company is exempt due to the great success of sale of a financially difficult situation. Stacker allowed the users to compress files to about half the original file size and take advantage of the then very limited and expensive hard disk space more effectively.
Confrontation with Microsoft
With the release of Microsoft's MS -DOS 6.2 in 1993 ended the sales success of Stacker. The Microsoft operating system contained its own compression program called Double Space and thus ended the quasi- monopoly of Stac Electronics in the market for data compression. Various circumstantial evidence suggested the assumption that Doublespace based on the technology of Stacker. In a subsequent trial of 1994 Stac Electronics sued Microsoft for unauthorized use of patents and industrial espionage and got a compensation of U.S. $ 5.50 per sold copy of MS -DOS 6.2, awarded a total of approximately $ 120 million.
Microsoft responded with a countersuit. Stac have driven among other things by reverse engineering the undocumented PRELOAD interface in DOS 6 and their use in Stacker 3.1 against trade secret of Microsoft. Microsoft was subsequently awarded a compensation of $ 13.6 million.
Stac Electronics in turn obtained an injunction which prohibited further sales of MS- DOS 6.2. Then DOS was sold as version 6.21 without Double Space.
Ultimately, both parties agreed in late 1994 to a comparison. Microsoft secured Stac Electronics is a company investment of $ 39.9 million and a patent buy-out fee in the amount of $ 43,000,000 and Stac Electronics waived all existing claims. Microsoft implemented reconsider the compression now licensed under the name of Drive Space with DOS 6.22.
Resolution of the company
After the comparison with Microsoft Stac Electronics was looking for new revenue opportunities and developed different products, of which, however, none was a huge commercial success. As part of the ' New Economy ' called the company in 1998 in order Previo and developed software products. With the bursting of the New Economy bubble, the company disbanded in 2002. Until then developed software technology was sold at a profit to its competitor Altiris.