Slashdot Mirror
Why Bill Gates Wants 3,000 New Patents
theodp writes "The NY Times looks at Microsoft's newly acquired passion for patents and wonders: What would Thomas Jefferson think if he were around to visit Microsoft's campus, seeing software patents stacked like pyramids of cannonballs? Jefferson might also be shocked by Microsoft's summer crop of patent apps, which includes Creating a note related to a phone call, Adding and removing white space from a document and Identifying when baseball is exciting. Gotta meet that quota of 60 fresh, nonobvious patentable ideas a week!"
Doesn't the entire typography community have prior art by o I don't know a few hundred years? "starting on February 23, 1455."--wikipedia Or even sadder the koreans by atleast a thousand years? as seen here
I wonder what would happen if Microsoft tried to enforce a mearly questionable patent against a defendant, and the defendant were to use Microsoft's own patent arsenal as evidence? Just picture it, they take someone to court over a patent that to a non technical person might seem reasonable, and the defendant shows that it is an obvious idea and then shows for further evidance Microsoft's more ridiculous patents like the note related to a phone call thing to demonstrate that Microsoft has made patenting obvious concepts standard operating procedure?
But this IS trivial...ambient volume goes up...it's exciting...volume goes down, boring. Have you even seen a group of fans stoic during an exciting event? They're probably all screaming their heads off, and the announcer probably sounds like he's about to have a coronary.
You put too much trust into Big Blue. Unfortunately, their only incentive right now is "anything but fall prey to Microsoft." If Big Blue could be MS themselves, they'd be, in an instant This open source support seems just a defense for them. The motto: Better work for free and give the stuff away, then work for free and be hung out to dry at MS's whim.
Alright people, this is stupid. Computer software patents in the U.S. have to be abolished. I've written my senators and representative. What else should we do now?
J'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, parce qu'ils se reposent. -- Alexandre Dumas
> IBM is to a great extent a research company;
l
IBM makes $2 billion/year from patent licenses. With that amount of money and over 10000 patents in diverse areas, they make MS look like a grade-school bully.
From: http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html
After IBM's presentation, our turn came. As the Big Blue crew looked on (without a flicker of emotion), my colleagues--all of whom had both engineering and law degrees--took to the whiteboard with markers, methodically illustrating, dissecting, and demolishing IBM's claims. We used phrases like: "You must be kidding," and "You ought to be ashamed." But the IBM team showed no emotion, save outright indifference. Confidently, we proclaimed our conclusion: Only one of the seven IBM patents would be deemed valid by a court, and no rational court would find that Sun's technology infringed even that one.
An awkward silence ensued. The blue suits did not even confer among themselves. They just sat there, stonelike. Finally, the chief suit responded. "OK," he said, "maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"
>Thus they come up with large numbers of what most Slashdotters see as legitimate inventions.
Legitimate?;
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-961803.html
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/10/17/005232.shtm
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I was doing some reading the other day, and based on what I found, I'm not certain that software, technically, and legally, is patentable. The latest ruling determined that the loading of software into a machine makes it into a new machine, and thus, patentable, but it didn't go so far as to say that software, by itself, is patentable- the USPTO has held that software is primarily a series of mathematical algorithms, and as such cannot be patented. I'm wondering if there's still a fundamental question here that needs to be decided by the courts.
What would Thomas Jefferson think if he were around to visit Microsoft's campus, seeing software patents stacked like pyramids of cannonballs?
Thomas Jefferson would be mightly unhappy!!! Origiannly TJ was against patents and copyrights however his friend James Madison eventually talked and showed him how they could be beneficial and support the creation of new art and objects. Once he was convinced TJ, using an actuary table, calculated patents and copyrights should only last 28 years, if I recall right 14 years with one 14 year extention possible.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Patent's aren't a bad thing. They allow a *limited* monopoly on an *invention* for a period of about 15 years at *most* (in the USA). Yeah, technology changes... The Lempel Ziv Welch patent which recently expired is an example of a patent of a non obvious method which changed our lives and is now free to implement. There are better algorithms and tons of other patents in the image compression space, but this was a particularly high profile patent.
Any patents on obvious or previously implemented technologies won't stand up in court, but of course, it means paying lawyers to stick up for the little guys who don't have the money.
But just because you don't like the law doesn't mean that you can suddenly chnage the rules, unless you are a congressman, and then you can only make the rules under your jurisdiction.
Microsoft may not be the worlds best team player, but that doesn't mean that MS doesn't deserve to use the inventions its employees legitimately invent. It also doesn't mean that Microsoft can't charge licensing fees for the usage of those patents.
What is scary is the number of companies whose sole existence is to buy up patents with potential litigation and then sue people with products that potentially violate the patents. These companies of lawyers suing companies making real products is a disturbing trend in the industry. Normally, when one large company sues another for violating patents, the other counter sues, and the two companies shake hands and agree to license each other's patents. But when a company that exists solely to sue large and small companies sues, they tie up our court system to take money from people who build the products that make our world run.
That ends up coming from all of our pockets to make a few people who bought a few inventions fabulously wealthy.
The moral of the story is that all the large corporations now seem to be cross-licensing each others patents so that hungry lawyer companies attempting to claim huge amounts of money can be beaten down with a big "I licensed that technology from XYZ corp" stick. And the big corps have also started licensing some of these technologies, Microsoft for example has this website here. Is this progress? Well, OSS needs to develop its own patents if it wants to compete. Is it not unreasonable for individuals in the Open Source movement to compete like this?
"Hello Pot. This is kettle. You're black."
Why don't they just impose a patent limit on companies? If each company is limited to 10 patents, we wouldn't have to deal with this mess. Have an option to release a patent if you want to file a new one after you've reached 10 patents.
Or would it just start a slew of people operating multiple companies and licensing their software to their other companies?