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Microsoft is the Industry's Most Innovative Company?
mjasay writes "According to a recent analysis by IEEE, Microsoft's patent portfolio tops the industry in terms of overall quality of its patents. And while Microsoft came in second to IBM in The Patent Board's 2006 survey, its upcoming 2007 report has Microsoft besting IBM (and even its 2006 report had Microsoft #1 in terms of the "scientific strength" of its patent portfolio). All of which begs the question: Just where is all this innovation going? To Clippy? Consumers and business users don't buy patents. They buy products that make their lives easier or more productive, yet Microsoft doesn't seem to be able to turn its patent portfolio into much more than life support for its existing Office and Windows monopolies. In sum, if Microsoft is so innovative, why can't we get something better than the Zune?"
I wonder if they included Microsoft patents such as their Virtual Desktop Pager patent? (http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&p=1&p=1&S1=(Microsoft.ASNM.+AND+%22Virtual+desktop+manager%22)&OS=AN/Microsoft+and+) Honestly, a vast portion of Microsoft's patents are complete bullshit that should NEVER have been awarded. Remove cases of OBVIOUS prior art (Linux has had virtual desktop pagers as described in that patent forever, and when they received this patent Microsoft had never used such a thing), and Microsoft's patent portfolio is shit. ~nog_lorp
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
The article, I notice, is rather light on details about what sort of patents they're talking about. As the OP says, people don't buy patents--they buy products. So concretely, what sort of innovation is Microsoft involved in? The article doesn't really go into that.
Frankly, I think the patent system hasn't been a good gauge of innovation in many, many years. Patents are issued for everything from BS "perpetual motion machines" to the grilled cheese sandwich are granted routinely.
Gifts for Geeks - Stuff that really matters!
Microsoft Research is really cool. They crank out cool stuff all the time! Take a look! The problem is that most of their stuff never sees the light of day. MS just gets the patent then bury it and move on. WinFS and other neat things came out of there. They hire a lot of PhDs, too... James Larus, the guy that wrote SPIM (MIPS simulator) works there now...
Gotta get me one of these!
Things that I have either heard of or seen coming from Redmond:
Any of which could have had multiple patents. A lot of what they do is impractical as a product now (the wall for instance), but is an investment in the future. Like in the early 90's when they purchased tons of digital rights. And some, like the Network LOD, are designed for developers to tie them into MS products.
But Microsoft, like AT&T when it had too much money, take a bunch of academics, give them money, and tell them to do cool things. After all, the whole deparment will pay for itself with a couple of nifty inventions.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
A word on Microsoft's ClearType "innovation":
http://www.grc.com/ctwho.htm
Words describing the article: 61
Words bashing Microsoft: 74
Comment of the year
As far as I know, T-SQL only allows top(). Whereas MYSQL allows Limit X, Y, which allows you to basically "page" results to show, say records 5-10. T-SQL makes it redundant:
MYSQL:
SELECT * FROM records LIMIT 5, 5
T-SQL
SELECT TOP(5) * FROM records WHERE id NOT IN (SELECT TOP(5) * FROM records)
They both select records 5-10, but one is more redundant. (and possibly more memory intensive, slower, etc)
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex