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Microsoft Won't Assert Web Services Patents
Andy Updegrove writes, "Microsoft has just posted the text of a new promise not to assert its patents with respect to 35 listed Web Services standards. The promise is similar to the covenant not to assert patents that it issued last year with respect to its Office 2003 XML Reference Schema, with two important improvements intended to make it more clearly compatible with open source licensing. Those changes are to add an explicit promise not to assert any relevant patents against anyone in the distribution chain of a product, from the original vendor through to the end user; and to clarify that the promise covers a partial as well as a full implementation of a standard. It's all part of a recent wave of such pledges made by companies such as IBM, Nokia, and Oracle, and a significant shift in how Microsoft is dealing with open standards."
Can't see any downside to them making such a pledge, so lets all be sure to be unreserved in our praise. Who knows, maybe we can encourage more of the same sort of behaviour. And not only just from Microsoft, lots of patents out there held by lots of companies, many of them potential mortal threat.
:)
Yea Microsoft!
See, my tongue didn't burst into flames or anything.
Democrat delenda est
So, can somebody tell me why you would have a patent if you are not going to enforce it?
"Pay no attention to the Patent Lawyers behind the curtains...."
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
The banner is not red.
You have the killer eye fungus.
You are bleeding into your eye.
Soon it will eat your brain.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
because its patent (on XML in this instance) was soundly thrashed about and it had to re-word it thus reducing its impact.
0 0041E39CC2571D4007DF1C8
Story on it here: http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/UNID/E6D44C46
snip
The patent will no longer cover the XML file formats that Microsoft is using and therefore anyone is free to interoperate with Microsoft file formats without fear of patent litigation from this particular patent
snip
The prior art around AbiWord's handling of XML basically did for the original patent Microsoft was after. The new one doesn't really have the same issues for the industry at large.
I am a leaf on the wind
Act One
.NET stuff?"
... but to make applications that do anything at all you need our libraries. You need to buy Visual Studio and we're afraid it's a bit pricey ..."
Setting: 1990s
Developer: "Man, java is the shit!" (hey, it was the 90s, everybody spoke like an idiot)
Microsoft: "Then you'll love J++, it's more efficient and other stuff that we don't need to prove. Plus, it will soon be used by everyone everywhere."
Developer: "Cool, sport me a copy!"
Microsoft: "Not so fast, it's $300 a personal license."
Developer: "No thanks."
(Scene ends)
Act Two
Setting: late 1990s
Developer: "JSP's are stupid awesome."
Microsoft: "Then you'll love ASPs, they're more efficient and other stuff that we don't need to prove. Plus, it will soon be used by everyone everywhere."
Developer: "Cool, where do I get the compiler for VB or this
Microsoft: "Well, you can make ASPs for free and stuff and almost everyone has IIS anyways
Developer: "No thanks."
(Scene ends)
Act Three
Setting: the oughts
Developer: "XML makes my life easier but it's not standardized."
Microsoft: "Use our standard, it's the best! Uh, it's kind of sorta free. You can edit it easy and use it. *cough* but we've got some patents *cough* so go ahead and use it."
Developer: "Wait, what was that last part?"
Microsoft: "Aw, christ, well, to stop everyone from slowly eating away at our dominant market, go ahead and use it. We promise not to sue but no backsies on these patents!"
Developer: "What the fsck, Microsoft, get it through your heads, we just want to get along. Stop charging us for everything (even standards). Change your business model."
(Scene ends, developer storms off to go play nice with the Sun & the rest of the world)
My work here is dung.
Maybe they should sign them over to a 3rd party such as the FSF instead of making nonbinding promises.
As much as software patents may be a horrible idea, and as much as people here generally hate Microsoft, maybe this is a *good* step? The company has pledged publicly that they won't actually assert their patent rights... and since these are patents we're talking about, it means that noone else can either.
Maybe it's just the sort of protection that the open source movement needs so that we *can* innovate without having to jump through a bunch of hoops or worry about facing legal action?
I read your post as
Billy: Come over here.
Me: No! You'll hit me!
Billy: No I won't.
Me: Yes you will.
Billy: No I won't, I promise.
Me: Uh, okay.
Billy: (PUNCH!) Sucker!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
What legal binding do these "pledges" have? Why not back up the pledges by just releasing the patent into the public domain?
--
make install -not war
It's a positive step, because it shows they can act rationally, having had their share of trouble from software patents. It also goes to show that, if software patents are bad for Microsoft, they should be considered generally as a Bad Thing for the software business in general.
There is a general attitude in Washington, sponsored by the ??AA, that any law that creates more "intellectual property" is good for business. Microsoft is sending a message that it ain't necessarily so.
Two words: promissory estoppel.
IANAL. I'm not even sure I spelled either word right. But the thing is, legally, if you make a promise, and I act on that promise, you can't turn around and sue me for acting on your promise.
OK, it's a bit muddier than that. You can still sue me. Anybody can pretty much sue anybody for anything. But you can't win the lawsuit, and losing can be painful enough that most people don't play such games.
It's actually even muddier than that. You can't win the lawsuit, unless there's something else going on, like I'm also infringing on some other patent that you didn't promise not to sue on. So don't blindly take this and run without actually understanding what Microsoft said. It may go less far than you expect. But that paranoia aside, it's actually a really cool thing for MS to do (and I don't say that very often).
Historically, Microsoft has not been a big proponent of winning through patents, either by preventing competition or extorting usage fees. They like to win in other ways. The big software houses see Web Services as the key towards the next great era of business software, and they all like their chances. But that only happens if they can avoid getting stuck in a mire of standards dueling and IP litigation (see: Blu-Ray/HD DVD).
Notice that the pledge includes the standard defensive measure - if you sue Microsoft for infringing one of your patents, it's void. But it was carefully crafted so that only Microsoft code used to directly implement one of the specifications is covered by the defensive clause - not all of Windows and MS Office for example. That's perhaps the most impressive part of the pledge.
A pledge is a lot nicer, since a license would need to be signed and returned by every recipient of software covered by the specifications.
This, in turn, creates issues where somebody who distributes free software cannot automatically pass the license on to the people dowloading the software.
A universal pledge, that covers everybody, is a lot more practical.
A good reason to patent something you "invented", even if you have no intention of enforcing them yourself, is to prevent some small company that does nothing *but* patent from patenting your "invention" and coming after you. Even if you had "prior art", the case costs money to actually win, so you might feel compelled to settle to make it go away.
Microsoft normally doesn't sue over patents, but they're the biggest target for these patent-specialist companies (since MS has the most money, and potential suers think MS would be more likely to settle since they can do it without missing the cash), so they patent their stuff for their own protection.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Uhhhh, actually, there is a legal doctrine called "reliance". If somebody says "I won't do this even though the law lets me", and you rely on their promise, then they have very little chance of successfully doing it. The judge will throw their case out of court so fast it will go into orbit.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The implicit message conveyed is that Microsoft has patented all these standards, giving the impression that all these public web standards are thanks to the innovation of Microsoft. They have contributed to ssome of these (most notably the SOAP specification), but web services are not just due to Microsoft. Furthermore, having contributed to SOAP as a public standard in a W3C process should certainly have prevented them from being able to patent it (or am I wrong?). SOAP is, however, included in the list of 35 software patents which are not enforces??? I would think that the W3C would have a policy that if a company contributes to a public standard and then patents it, that that company would be prevented from participating in any other community processes. Does anyone have the actual list of patents?