Microsoft Details FOSS Patent Breaches

CptRevelation writes "Microsoft has released more detailed information on the patents supposedly in breach by the open-source community. Despite their accusations of infringement, they state they would rather do licensing deals instead of any legal action. 'Open-source programs step on 235 Microsoft patents, the company said. Free Linux software violates 42 patents. Graphical user interfaces, the way menus and windows look on the screen, breach 65. E-mail programs step on 15, and other programs touch 68 other patents, the company said. The patent figures were first reported by Fortune magazine. Microsoft also said Open Office, an open-source program supported in part by Sun Microsystems Inc., infringes on 45 patents. Sun declined to comment on the allegation.'"

Comments

So lets be pre-emptive

[lnxnomad]

According to Google (Issued Patents) Microsoft has apx 600 issued patents dating back to January 1987 (don't care about any issued prior to that). So lets create a project to evaluate each patent for validity and non-obivousness, locate prior-art if any, and identify possible infringement in FOSS code.

Note that many of these are for things we may not care about (like mice, keyboards etc) so the number to analyse will go down. Still non-trivial, but all it needs is persistence, the help of a few law students, and the IT crowd to hunt down prior art. And lets put it all in one place where anyone that gets sued can go to for a definitive reference.

BTW, I am not aware of such a thing being out there already, if so then please let me know, my quick search didn't find it this morning.

What do you all think?