Through the Patent Looking Glass with Microsoft

Andy Updegrove writes "By now you've probably read more than you want to about Microsoft's announcement that it owns 235 patents underlying leading open source software, including many opinions about whether Microsoft's new assertions do, or don't, represent a real threat to Linux, OpenOffice, and other OSS. To get to the bottom of the issue, though, you have to take a deep dive into how patent cross licensing works these days. When you do, you realize that patents don't mean what they used to, and have far more defensive than offensive value in the marketplace today. It also becomes apparent that it really doesn't matter whether Microsoft has valid patents or not, because so many other companies do as well. Today, what companies worry about isn't asserting their patents against other companies, but maintaining their freedom of activity. In this case, the open source community can simply ride the coattails of the major vendors, because Microsoft doesn't hold enough cards to win the hand, much less the game." Relatedly The Register is reporting that the author of the main report being used by Microsoft to support their patent claims has come out against Microsoft's interpretation of his work and Jonathan Schwartz gives some free advice to the overly litigious.

Comments

Major correction for you

[Mateo_LeFou]

"there is almost no difference between this "everyone has defensive patents" world, and the "no one has any patents at all" world. In both cases, companies that hold a bunch of patents are free to operate as they see fit"

See the important difference. It's the *thousands of companies who don't hold a bunch of patents. They are not free to operate as they see fit in the former case, and in fact live in a Damoclean situation where their continued survival is dependent on being below the radar of the patent oligarchy. In the latter case, they are free to operate as they see fit.

Or did you have some plan for providing these defensive patents to "everyone"?

Re:No matter what MS says

[Trailer Trash]

But I thought Linus made a point of not investigating possible patent problems with Linux so that he couldn't be accused of deliberately violating them. If he hasn't looked into the patents, how could he possibly know that MS's claims are FUD?

That's an easy one. If they weren't just FUD, Microsoft would detail the patents and the infringement. This is directly analogous to the SCO case, where rather than showing which code was copied they just claimed that a bunch was.

If you're truly being harmed by someone's infringement, you have a legal duty to let them know as soon as possible so that they have the opportunity to quit infringing. If, on the other hand, you're using FUD to muddy the waters...