Documentation Compliance Means MS Can Resume Collecting Protocol Royalties

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."

Comments

Outrageous

[PizzaAnalogyGuy]

This is outrageous, and I have two examples why. First, protocols are like food recipes. The pizza you sell is yours, but the ingredients to make it is not. Here the protocol is your ham, pineapple, salami and shrimps on a barbeque sauce large size pan pizza. You have not stolen the app from your competitor, you're just making yours compatible with theirs. Like the third party IM clients can connect to MSN network. Secondly, how would any of those open source apps pay for the royalties? But maybe this is Microsoft's plan. Let me tell you what is happening here. Microsoft is paying for the local BBQ Sauce factory to include a license agreement before you can use their sauce in your pizzas. The license agreement says you are only allowed to use their BBQ sauce on Microsoft approved pizzas. And before you know, these pizzas will be degraded. Forget your ham, forget your pineapples, forget you bacon and forget your cheese. THIS is the pizza we offer, and this will be the pizza you like.

Re:Outrageous

[QuantumG]

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

Re:Outrageous

[Shakrai]

Yes, I should have left it at trade secret. My stupid. I shall now commence pounding my head against the table to atone for my error.

I also think that we just got trolled, based on the handle of the first poster.....

Re:Outrageous

[bmo]

A protocol is simply a statement of facts.

Facts are not copyrightable.

Sweat of the brow does not determine if something is deserving of copyright either. It must have _some_ creativity. Indeed, this is why software for years was not deserving of copyright, because it was considered a "list of instructions for a machine" instead of creative. This changed in the early 80's I believe (correct me if it was earlier).

A recipe is not copyrightable. It is a list of facts to reach a goal. The artwork, layout, etc, however, is. Thus cookbooks are copyrighted.

Software is unique in that it's now protected by both copyright, as if it's art, _and_ patent, as if it's a machine. Why one needs both is baffling to me.

--
BMO

Re:Outrageous

[symbolset]

You have to give him (or her) points for creating a new account that memes another troll username and getting the initial comment with a topical troll message that references the username. That's troll diligence there.

Re:Outrageous

[timmarhy]

yeah right how dare they not just do it all for free right? there's no reason you can't charge a license for a protocol, just like any other piece of software. there should of course be nothing preventing you writing a competing protocol or your own clean room version. that's why patent are bad, but this is not.

Re:Outrageous

[ozmanjusri]

Kentucky Fried Chicken Seasoning Mix Recipe
Just mix these commonly-found spices together! Great when used for skinless chicken fingers too.

2 tablespoons salt
2 cups flour
2 tablespoons pepper
4 tablespoons paprika
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 tablespoon mustard, ground
1 tablespoon French thyme, ground
1 tablespoon sweet basil
1 teaspoon oregano, ground
1 tablespoon jamaica ginger, ground

http://www.bubhub.com.au/community/forums/showthread.php?t=14201&page=2

Re:Outrageous

[symbolset]

RAND is a cover for non-open. It used to work before the lawyers got ahold of it. Let me school you:

There is one and only one measure of openness now: You can implement it without a license, or you can't. That's it. You want to be interoperable, or you want to control who can interact with your interface. The control is the limiting factor and it's the difference between useful and not.

Re:Outrageous

[The Cisco Kid]

You might be able to patent a *particular* implementation of the protocol, but if you think you can patent a 'protocol', you don't understand what a protocol is.

Its like patenting a language. Can you imagine someone patenting English, or French, and then in order to speak it, you'd have to pay a license fee? I'm not talking about books on learning the language, or video courses, or whatever, I'm talking about the language itself.

protocols

[sopssa]

Since when protocols are something you can license? They're pretty much available for everyone, technical details available or not. Protocols really shouldn't be limited by licenses.

However on another case, Blizzard has been fighting such too against cheaters on their games.

But really, what law do you violate if you're using a "licensed" protocol? I haven't heard of such cases before.

Re:protocols

[phantomfive]

It is extremely rare that a protocol becomes a competitive advantage because of their quality, mainly because designing a protocol in most cases isn't really very hard. Usually the only reason to keep a protocol secret is to keep competitors from interoperating with your software, which is why Microsoft was convicted of being a monopolist in the first place.

In fact I can't think of any protocol that was kept secret because it performed better at the time. Maybe some old networking protocol or something. I can think of a ton of protocols that were kept secret purposely to prevent interoperability. Here's a few:

SMB/CIFS
CDMA diagnostic port protocol
Blizzard online game protocols
IPodITunes protocol
Skype
AIM protocol
MSN chat protocol
Yahoo chat protocol

There are others. Fortunately reverse engineering a product for the purpose of interoperability is allowed under the DMCA. That is one of the bright spots of that legislation.

Re:protocols

[symbolset]

Protocols are not code. Protocols are methods of interaction between pieces of code, even if the code is methods of interaction embedded in hardware. That these methods could possibly be considered as something that should be protected by some sort of intellectual property agreement is a testament to how far we've fallen from the root assumption of Unix: that all things should be able to connect to all other things whenever physically possible.

This is the mindset that brought us DRM, all of Sony's stupid proprietary media formats, and an iPhone that won't tether.

I'm sick of it. I have enough stuff that doesn't connect to my other stuff. I'm not buying any more stuff that doesn't connect to the stuff that I already have. I'm not using any systems that require proprietary licensing to connect the stuff I have to the new stuff I buy. I'm done with all that stupidness.

Re:protocols

[Brandano]

Not only that, the DMCA explicitly allows reverse engineering of software in order to allow for interoperability with other applications:
see paragraph (f) here:
http://static.chillingeffects.org/1201.shtml
Microsoft has no ground to stand on from the copyright angle, so it's attempting to imlpement the same limitations from a software patent angle. Which currently has no value in most of the civilized world.

Just in time, too!

[Weaselmancer]

And it only took them ten years.

Funny how the government doesn't even give you ten days past the due date of a parking violation though, isn't it?

Decision to force them to document more protocols

[electrosoccertux]

An interesting side effect of the DOJ's decision to force Microsoft to document more of their protocols was that internal Microsoft employees have found their job easier and the teams more efficient.
I stumbled across this tidbit while research for a final paper about software patent (good/bad/why/alternatives). You can read about it here.

Congratulations!

[Bob9113]

Congratulations, Microsoft, and allow me to offer this toast:

May you attempt to create a revenue stream and inhibit competition, and continue to poison your long-term success by limiting others' ability to create novel goods and services with your platforms.

May your long, slow, demise be as stealthy as a panther in the night, so that you may continue not to understand until it is too late to recover and your war chest is too depleted to purchase any particularly egregious laws during your death spasms.

And finally, may Steve Ballmer always be your public face. He is nearly as amusing as Sarah Palin.

:)

Re:Congratulations!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

And finally, may Steve Ballmer always be your public face. He is nearly as amusing as Sarah Palin.

You software hippies are just afraid of Steve Ballmer because of his good looks, his charm, his masculinity, his Christianity, his ability connect to the common user and his overall wonderfulness!

Samba has a license for many of the key patents

[tridge]

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