Microsoft claims free software violates 235 of it's patents
Posts: 1109
This should get real interesting.
Fortune Magazine article with Microsoft claiming 235 of it's patents are being violated
A quick glance at the article shows that MS is now claiming that the Linux kernel violates violates 42 Microsoft patents, with more from GUIs, Open Office, and other free software (it all adds up to a claim that 235 of it's patents are being violated).
This tells me that...
Posts: 145
...Linux is REALLY getting good!
The Tramp
Comment from Groklaw
Posts: 1027
Ooh, ooh, the bogeyman is gonna getcha with his stupid patents. Or maybe
not.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070513234519615
Mike
As usual, this is an attempt
Posts: 42
As usual, this is an attempt to spread FUD, hoping that this will scare some people away from FLOSS.
But given that pretty much everything is patented, any non-trivial piece of code - including their cash cows Windows and Office - cannot do without violating at least one SW patent.
So everyone is vulnerable, in case someone launches a nuke war by starting the litigation. The only winning move for everybody (but the lawyers, since their income stems from litigations...) is not to play.
Abolishing / not introducing SW patents, plain and simple, would be a bonus.
Recent Supreme Court Rulings should help
Posts: 1109
MS has a history of waiting until something is commonly used before claiming patent infringement, too. For example, the fiasco with the FAT patent (which was probably just a way for them to go after open source software including FAT support anyway). Only after FAT was commonly used in a lot of devices and operating systems, did Microsoft want to start charging royalties. That's a typical "dirty trick". Of course, the patent should not have been granted to begin with from my perspective.
Some of the recent Supreme Court rulings on Patents should help some of this nonsense (making the standard for patents higher and making it easier to invalidate some of the existing ones).
Patenting stuff that should not deserve patent protection (because it's obviously based on prior art and commonly used techniques) is a high priority of companies like MS. Only time will tell how all of this nonsense will play out.
In this case, I think it's mostly scare tactics and FUD (they probably don't want the patents challenged in court, especially with the recent Supreme Court rulings that make the standard of proof higher for patents that are using obvious techniques).
Jim C.
.. and besides, they should
Posts: 2299
.. and besides, they should have to go after their own clients... that would be a PR disaster.
The only thing they are after is mutual 'non agression' pacts the way they did with Novell. This increases their share holder's value without affecting the relationship with their customers. I am no GPL freak, but if GPL3 can prevent such deals from coming through, I guess that would be a good thing...
Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question
Do they count isNot() and
Posts: 4077
Do they count isNot() and double-click patents?
Software patents are evil, if Microsoft uses them I guess it make them evil (which would not be such big news to me) Microsoft also lies, so I don't know what to believe.
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