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Has Microsoft's Patent War Against Linux Begun?
Glyn Moody writes "Microsoft has filed a suit against TomTom, 'alleging that the in-car navigation company's devices violate eight of its patents — including three that relate to TomTom's implementation of the Linux kernel.' What's interesting is that the intellectual property lawyer behind the move, Horacio Gutierrez, has just been promoted to the rank of corporate vice president at Microsoft. Is this his way of announcing that he intends going on the attack against Linux?"
Skip the ads and get the PDF of the complaint:
http://media.techflash.com/documents/tomtomComplaint.pdf
A quickie read of it still has me going "WTF!?" a lot. Seriously - they patented such things like:
"Vehicle Computer System with Wireless Connectivity"
"Portable Computing Device-Integrated Appliance"
A quick look at the dates these things were granted, and most gadget geeks' memories should spark something: Most of this crap shouldn't have been patentable in the first place (wish they appended the patents to the complaint, though... it'd make things a lot easier to eyeball and evaluate in one spot).
I'm guessing MSFT is just hoping to force a settlement, so that they can then use it as a cudgel... thing is, Microsoft is using a lot of OSS code nowadays too (IIRC in MSN/Live Messenger, Visual Studio 2008, and etc - linky here).
Look at it this way...
Is your data SAFE in a Microsoft format?
What other patents do they have that my not have been asserted in this case?
Is your company future safe with anything other than pure, fully accepted and vetted open source I.P.?
How about your documents, and your ability to manipulate them at will, without encumbrance or fees?
Microsoft isn't the only company that can play the fear game.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
And where are the lawsuits against Digital Cameras, USB Flash Drives, portable HDD's, the iPod....
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
They're on the way, probably. This is most likely a shot across the bow.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Doesn't this seem like anticompetitive behavior? I think we're needing a new lawsuit.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
> Meaning, in no way will Microsoft ever be able to take on Linux directly....
Which they have no intention of doing, for exactly the reasons you mention. They don't have to. IBM can do what it wants with Linux, safe in the knowledge they are one of the companies with a patent portfolio. Tom Tom on the other hand....
Which is the message they want to send. Only players are allowed to play in the big leagues. If Tom Tom wants to enter the game they must license their IP from someone with a patent portfolio. Somebody like Novell or even IBM. But thinking one can just download Linux and enter the arena without a major defender is going to be shown as too dangerous for VC money, large instituitions, etc. At which point the major potential for market disruption implied by Linux, Open Source, Free Software, etc. is gone. This is just the warning shot. If companies like ASUS and Acer don't get the message expect an example to be made of one of the netbook makers soon.
Democrat delenda est
This sort of thing boggles my mind. You, as a company, make a lot of lovely commercials talking about how easy your OS is to copy pictures, and do all sorts of cool things. You employ a kid to pimp your OS. Everything is clouds and rainbows.
In the past, you made it so your OS *only* supports file systems that you hold patents for. It's sketchy, but that's what you did. It even seems convenient to the end user cause they don't need to decide what format to do. Camera and device makers are faced with a choice to either:
A) Use your file system in the storage to make it easy to copy (like in the commercials you make later).
B) Force the makers to create an interface and make the copy process a pain for the end user.
So, most makers choose A since the standard's been published and things seem pretty calm and clear. Happiness abounds, and since the standard is readily available almost everyone else has employed usage of said OS. It's lightweight, does a simple job quite well. Device makers make plenty of products that directly support and utilize your FS and it seems to add value to your OS.
Then, you decide it's time to enforce the patent. Against certain competitors, or you start charging licensing fees. Device makers and the competition has to suffer since your OS dominates the market and there's no way to go back and stop using the FS since that requires recalling your entire product portfolio.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is: WHY DO THIS? Greed.. At least that's a simple answer.
More importantly though, does this qualify as either abusive or anti-competitive? I certainly think so. IANAL, but even if it's neither the former, it's certainly un-ethical. It's certainly a great way to get more people to hate you. It's only a matter of time before someone with enough resources hates you enough to pull you into court or a governmental session and start killing you in the public eye and in the bottom line.
Yes, all patents expire. Because of the date on which this patent (#5579517) was filed, it will expire 17 years after the issue date (Nov 26, 1996). So approximately November 2013.
However, it seems clear that Microsoft, as with most companies in this position, will continue to develop new derivative work that can be patented in turn. This will allow them to continue to constraint the filesystem under patent as it will be implemented in 2013, which may or may not matter depending on how the world works in the distant future.
That's odd - I had exactly the opposite experience. Granma's ubuntu 6.04 linux box was great. She could browse the web, do email, photos and letters (four icons on the desktop). Great that is, until the nice young bloke at the computer store convinced her to buy a vista PC. Now she's whining "why doesn't this work? It did before!" Meh my ass.
The "microsoft tax" is unavoidable. Unless you can figure out a way to buy unformatted removable storage, you have already paid MS.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
This exact patent is the example I use when people ask what's so bad about software patents. It is the most retarded patent I've seen. It's sillier than it seems at first glance.
If you read the Wiki, it explains that there are no patents on the basic 8.3 (DOS Filename) FAT itself, or even FAT32. It's a patent on the long filename support.
The basic problem is this: Assume you have a file system which only supports very short filenames. It has directory entries, which are a simple array of 32-byte entries. Setting a certain bit flag will cause the OS to ignore the directory entry.
You wish to add support for long filenames in a backwards-compatible way.
9 out of 10 software engineers, given this task, will tell you exactly this: "What you do is, you create the files as usual, but you also create dummy directory entries (with the "hidden" flag set), containing the extra characters of the filename."
THAT is what this is all about. That is trivial. It is not only not clever. It is obvious, and it is also not a "useful" invention - it's only useful given the horrible mess that is the existing FAT, which is only necessary because Microsoft has a monopoly.
The fact that we need to use this hack is an embarrassment to our industry. The fact that the hack itself is what MS thinks gives them the right to sue everybody else on the planet is laughable.
Aside from the FAT issues, these are even more troubling:
6175789 - Vehicle computer system with open platform architecture
6202008 - Vehicle computer system with wireless internet connectivity
There are a lot of people in the geek community who build Linux-based car computers: http://www.mp3car.com/ . These patents, at first reading, seem to lock up that entire product space. Or at least, that's how Microsoft is going to spin it...