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Documentation Compliance Means MS Can Resume Collecting Protocol Royalties

Posted by Soulskill on from the only-took-seven-years dept.

angry tapir writes "Microsoft may begin collecting royalties again for licensing some protocols because clear technical documentation is now available, according to the US Department of Justice. The change comes after the DOJ issued its latest joint status report regarding its 2002 antitrust settlement with Microsoft. The settlement required Microsoft to make available technical documentation that would allow other vendors to make products that are interoperable with Windows."

2 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Outrageous by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can't copyright recipes, and anything can be regarded as a trade secret.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  2. Samba has a license for many of the key patents by tridge · · Score: 5, Informative
    Before everyone gets too worked up, please look at this:

    http://samba.org/samba/PFIF/

    Samba and any other free software project (via the PFIF) has a royalty free license to most of the patents that are important for these protocols.

    There are some patents that are excluded from this (see appendix 4 of the agreement for a list of the excluded patents), and we do indeed need to avoid infringement of those patents. That has not so far proved to be an insurmountable obstacle, although it is an inconvenience.

    Cheers, Tridge