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Microsoft Researching Patent Law with New Experts
wikinerd writes "According to The Register, Microsoft seeks to hire new patent experts. In their words, patent experience itself "is helpful but not mandatory" and advance knowledge of patent law is not required. The applicants need only be Computer Science or Electrical Engineering PhD holders, without any qualification in law. They will be involved in prior art search, patentability research and technical analysis. The article outlines some of the most controversial MS patents, such as online bill payment."
I don't know about you, but I'm not about to fund any massive development efforts if I have no recourse whatsoever should an employee of mine decide to sell my source code to a competitor. I agree that software patents in general are a bad idea, but there's no reason why someone should not be able to protect their proprietary work in any way, such as with copyrights.
Condidering the fact that getting a PhD in CS and EE is fairly easy these days, we should expect a lot of idiotic "methods and aparatii" from those new kids. Then couple of frivolous lawsuits against small corporations as a testing ground and finally against free software will follow during the next decades (probably some easy target, ala bnetd, so people will boycott Microsoft for few ours and then start buying new products, like with Blizzard) but it will result in very bad PR and counterclaims from IBM so the practice will probably be terminated after two (three at most) low-priority lawsuits from the top levels of the management, those new kids will get fired and everything will go back to normal. It will be certainly interesting to watch, but devastating to the US industry which will obviously benefit EU who will rather choose progress than software patents. It will mean stronger domination of Microsoft in the US and weaker in Europe. That of course means that it is a good time to buy stock of SuSE and Mandrake, and sell Red Hat.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I hope some of the real lawyers that read this site can confirm or discredit this.
:). Lawyers who work on IP issues tend to be very specialized and the firms they work for tend to be specialized as well.
Anyway, a friend of mine who happens to be a lawyer, when I asked what she knew about IP law stated that is so different from other types of law it has its own bar exam. Unless you actually pass that exam you are not really qualified to work on IP cases or to give legal advice. She said she will not touch IP law in any form because, in effect, it would be malpractice (I, of course, was hoping for some free advice
I have to wonder if by hiring unqualified people MS is heading for lots of problems.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
As opposed to... what, exactly?
It's already a Microsoft-dominated Tech Marketplace. Microsoft already uses every loophole there is to drive out competitors. It's not a step toward anything. They're just doing what's necessary to protect their investment.
Meanwhile I, and other open source developers, are doing what's necessary to make sure their investment was a bad one.
Formerly GNU/Anonymous Coward. This message has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals.
I think it's far more likely that the purpose of these new employees is to help Microsoft invalidate patents that may be used against it such as the bogus Eolas patent a few months back. That of course begs the question, why do they think that this is going to be an issue since they also think that software patents are such a good idea? Unless, perhaps, they *know* they are invalidating patents, are afraid they will get sued and feel that the best defense is a good offense...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I recently finnished reviewing a few patents because of a grant application I've made, they were mainly to do with commercial detection routines some of which have expired so the free PVR guys might want to have a look at those :-). They are the most boring and badly written crap that I've ever seen. The entire purpose is to make sure that you can't understand what the hell is going on in them. The patent lawyers make sure they are as broad as possible just to see if they can get away with it, I ask my patent lawyer about that and she confirmed it. They are annoying and sometimes very sparse on the technical details so you just have to guess what is meant. I don't think that reviewing patents is a job that I could do for very long while staying sane.
I'm curious too. What is their motivation here? Do they gain any sort of legal benefit out of being able to point to dedicated prior art researchers? I mean, they're spending the money -- why?
If I were to guess about what is about to come about, I'd say they are about to make some tests for their patents to see how well they will stand up against counter claims to invalidate their patents when they start lawsuits for usage.
This isn't just useful to ensure they aren't infringing. That's even kind of hard, because you're dealing with a huge space of potential patents.
What's useful about hiring a bunch of people to look for prior art is when you're trying to invalidate a patent being cited against you. Then you have a specific set of claims for which you can search for prior art. Of course, in the end, I like this, because it means stupid crappy patents will get weeded out by being invalidated at trial (if things go to trial rather than just being settled). Unfortunately, not everyone can afford to hire an army of people to do searches like this, so it's not the most efficient method...
I've been a lurker here for a few months, and while there's sometimes really intelligent stories, why is it that anytime someone mentions Microsoft we feel they've done something wrong?
Shouldn't we be happy that they're hiring PhD's to do their patent work, and not patent lawyers with no understanding of computer science?
And, after all, what is so evil about Microsoft? All that money that they make (mostly off of large corporations) does end up in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; yes, charity. I don't like IE anymore than the rest of you, but sometimes their corporation does no evil, same as google. Like them or not, software patents encourage incredible innovation in the field. You may be willing to release your source to the world, but for some, profit is a motivation. Would you rather that they left computer science entirely?
An open eye to the world, even to Microsoft, is never a bad idea. Disclaimer: I use firefox on Red Hat. I'm no great fan of Microsoft products either.
Given that in other news, the collapse of Microsoft is near, perhaps Microsoft will turn into a canopy type group? Perhaps they were funding SCO for R&D rather than FUD?
Keep in mind that Microsoft is also the deepest-pocket target for every crank with their own crazy patent. I know of several cases in the past few years where Microsoft spent a lot of money defending themselves in infringement suits against completely frivolous patents. Be glad that these patents were trashed, and hope that's how Microsoft continues to do its patent litigation.