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Microsoft Assembles Patent Arsenal for Longhorn
stock writes "The heat is on. Inside eweek.com are some remarkable articles: 'You see, Microsoft is busy patenting everything it can lay its hands on with
all three. In fact, Microsoft is now building up its patent arsenal, applying
for a rather amazing 10 patents a day. The idea isn't to ensure that
Microsoft makes a fair profit from its patents; it's to make sure that no one
else can write fully compatible software.' An older article mentions some other patents."
When has Microsoft EVER used patents as a tool for gaining market control?
How about using patents to extract FAT licensing fees from removable solid state media manufacturers? Or is that too easy?
There is already an easy way to do just that. Publish a so-called defensive publication, in one of journals USPTO (as well as researchers) read and use for their prior-art evaluation process. It's too bad not more companies and individuals know this, but it is a practice some (big) companies do use, as it is significantly cheaper than doing full patent application.
There should be defensive patents, patents issued saying "we figured out how to do this on our own, we don't want to stop other people form figuring out the same thing we just don't want to be prevented from using our inventions."
Actually, there are. They're called Statutory Invention Registration these days. For a very small fee you can just register that you invented something, without actually obtaining patent protection for it. But, the patent office will have that you invented it on file.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
There should be defensive patents, patents issued saying "we figured out how to do this on our own, we don't want to stop other people form figuring out the same thing we just don't want to be prevented from using our inventions."
These already exist. They're called publications. Once you've published something, nobody else can patent it (and you can't either, once a one-year time limit expires).
The only case where someone else could patent a method which you are already using is if you've kept the method a secret -- which is exactly what the patent system is designed to stop.
While there can be no doubt that the actual implementation of the patent system is severely flawed, the overall purpose and approach -- using the granting of monopolies to encourage people to publish their research instead of keeping it as "trade secrets" -- is certainly reasonable.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
If IBM had its way, your PC would be a glorified 3270 emulator connecting to some AS/400
You seem unaware that IBM went out of its way to make the original ISA architecture royalty free. The PC revolution happened because anyone could make a compatible hardware system. After enough other players made their fortunes they got together to make standards such as PCI and AGP without some individual company mandating it. But the ball started rolling with IBM's freely giving away the specs and rights to make compatible ISA.
Why does the open source community hate patents so much? I think that if the open source community came up with something new, they would hopefully patent it just like Microsoft are doing. If they didn't patent it, then they're fools because someone else will.
The thing that differentiates free and open source software from closed source is the lack of holding pieces of it hostage for money. It's what makes it open.
Having patents on an something atomatically makes open source software unable to implement it. Even if someone invents a way to get there and allows other people to use it, they are prevented from doing so by the patent.
Since copyright prevents someone from copying your invention in the software world, patenting software is only useful for preventing other people from coming up with another way to solve the same problem you did. This was not the original reason for patents.
You were supposed to be able to "build the better mouse trap" and patent it, not patent "building mouse traps".
Many open source licences (apache, samba) specifically say the software can't be used if any money is charged for licencing patents held on any technology inside. This prevents someone from creating a patent and sueing every company using the software for money to keep using apache/samba. They can ask that companies stop using the software, but they cannot ask for money to keep using it since if the company pais the money they are then in violation of the software's licence and must stop using it. It keeps unscrupulous companies from trying to gain effective ownership of other people's work.
The debate over patents is an old one. The benefits of having the freedom of to use knowledge and innovate vs the benefits of the profit incentive from being able to own patents. Open source software operates with the freedom of knowledge and innovation at it's core. Holding pieces of knowledge and pieces of software hostage for money can't work with open source.
I hope this answers your qutesion.
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