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Microsoft Claims Patent On Elements of Embedded Linux?

Posted by Zonk on from the strange-bedfellows dept.

Preedit writes "An InformationWeek story points out a recent deal between Microsoft and Japanese printer maker Kyocera Mita. Under the agreement, Kyocera obtained from Microsoft a license to patents used in 'certain Linux-based embedded technologies.' The question the author asks is why Kyocera needs a patent license from Microsoft to develop its embedded Linux products."

1 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. La Cosa Nostra! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    That this Japanese company is forced to pay shake-down money to a company that DOES NOT OWN THE TECHNOLOGY THEY ARE DEMANDING PAYMENT FOR!, means that La Cosa Nostra is alive and well but instead of being headquartered in New York or Chicago or Las Vegas (or Cuba), they have put down new roots in Redmond Washington. The technology was developed elsewhere by other people. Thank God Don Knuth published "The Art of Computer Programming" so many years ago. It covers thousands of algorithms (basically mathematical statements) covering computing, and thus, a source of prior art for all of the so-called patents that Microsoft so greedily tries to get (basically by checking a copy of the book out from the Library --they are too cheap to buy their own copy), and patenting everything in sight, then taking all and sundry to court for patent violation. When prior art is called, they say whoops, sorry, and in the mean time, the market has been swallowed by them (again). Bastards! Lying, stealing, cheating Bastards! Morally bankrupt and without a shred of decency, BASTARDS!