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Microsoft May Become Major Opponent of Patents?
UltimaGuy wrote to mention a story positing that Microsoft may one day be a major opponent of over-reaching patents. From the article: "Speaking at the LinuxWorld conference in London on Wednesday, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, said that although Microsoft is seen as being very pro-patent at the moment, if every other software maker enforced its patents in the same way then Microsoft would find it very difficult and expensive to do business. 'I think in ten years you will see Microsoft become a major opponent of patents and we will see very large software vendors turn around their position on patents,' Shuttleworth said."
It is important to note that Microsoft was in support of KSR International in their case against Teleflex (wraiting on Writ of certiorari before the SCOTUS). This case is questioning the requirement for a statement explaining why a combination under 35 USC 103 is obvious. This standard was created by the CAFC (Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit). It would not be an overstatement to say that removal of this requirement would prevent countless patents and would possibly invalidate thousands more.
So Microsoft definitely doesn't mind changing things that would hurt the issuance of patents, but I doubt they would go so far as to totally despise the patent system. The patent system can guarantee them money (well at least possibly) for years if they do have some horrific failure in the years to come. The 20 yr life of a patent might keep them afloat for a while if they ever need to use it.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I was at the Microsoft Research Intern BBQ at Gates' house this summer. Part of the time, a bunch of us were standing in a big nerd horde, with Gates in the middle, having a Q&A session.
I asked him something like "What is your position on software patents? Specifically, do you think Microsoft would be better or worse off if software patents did not exist?"
He went off on a 3-5 minute ranting monologue about how capitalism has been proven a better idea than communism, and that not having software patents is something that belongs in soviet russia, not in the U.S.
I think it'll be a long time before Microsoft changes its position.
Here in the EU, Microsoft sponsored about every pro-swpat lobbying entity: ACT, CompTIA, "Campaign for Creativity", EICTA, BSA, and additionally, various national organizations throughout the EU. They also had their own lobbyists running around in the European Parliament. I ran into them more than once. But they mostly tried to hide behind so-called industry associations.
Microsoft will try to modify patent law in the US and elsewhere to the effect that smaller players (trolls as well as truly productive companies) can't use patents too effectively against big ones, by limiting the amount of indemnities (at a level that gets 99% of the businesses in the industry bankrupt but is small change for MSFT), doing away with injunctive relief (which really hurts even the largest players because it disrupts revenue production and can lead to incalculable liabilities vis-a-vis customers) etc. If you look at what the BSA tries to achieve with respect to that U.S. patent reform bill, then you'll get the idea.
Funnily enough, Microsoft is one of the three main sponsors of the "EV50 Europeans of the Year" awards this year. However, the jury is perfectly independent, and they nominated me, as a representative of the anti-swpat movement in Europe :-) I'm running in the EU Campaigner of the Year catgory as well as for the overall European of the Year award. If I win that award, then the Microsoft-sponsored prize money will go to the FFII, an anti-swpat NGO. For more information (including on how to cast your vote against software patents, even if you're not based in Europe), please look at these two earlier slashdot postings:
Links to the ballot and general information (scroll down to the final part of that posting, that's where the information on the EV50 awards is)
Specific list of voting recommendations (since it's mandatory to make one choice in each of the ten categories, and most of the names there will be unknown to most people)
well, fact checking should precede posting. I got all my facts wrong according to our very well archived /. discussion of that patent>/a>. MS won and I misspelled the name of the loser. But my point is still standing: MS already talks out of both sides of its mouth on the matter of patents...and for the reasons cited in the parent.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
The big problem is working up a strategy to deal with this problem. The FOSS community doesn't seem to have a strategy in this area based on their opinion that patents aren't valid and therefore a strategy isn't needed.
I'll probably have to negotiate with some corporate lawyers on this one all by myself so I'll be at considerable disadvantage. If I get anything out of it, it will likely be highly restricted as to its area of application (problem is it's platform independent) so I'm betting it won't have a GPL license that allows GPL 3 to be applied when that comes out. The corporation will want to reserve it's right to sue for violations of the restriction.