Microsoft’s implicit demand here is that companies should figure out which Microsoft patents they’re violating and negotiate a licensing settlement. Industry experts believe that is unrealistic. In fact, there are many reasons a software company might wish to avoid checking existing patents for infringement:

1. There are too many patents to effectively search them all.
2. Patents are complicated and opaque and hence difficult to determine infringement.
3. Researching patents can actually open a company to additional liability and damages.
4. Microsoft doesn’t do it.

http://www.devtopics.com/are-software-patent-self-exams-realistic/

Anyone can file a request for reexamination of these patents - there does NOT first have to be a threat of litigation. All that is needed is prior art that was not considered during prosection of the patent that raises a “substantial new question of patentability.” PTO fees for reexamination are about 3k per patent. The folks who developed Linux are perfectly placed to identify any prior art that renders these MS patents invalid (i.e.anticipated or obvious). The community needs to organize and combine (1) technical folks finding prior art (2) patent folks willing to donate time to prepare the filings (yes, there are some, I’m one and see also www.pubpat.org), and (3) some funding from the companies now being shaken down to cover the USPTO filing fees. Let’s get those three elements together and FIGHT BACK!

Microsoft seems to be blowing it all out into the open, nothing left to the imagination here. if they fail in in there attemps at these new world order law suits (witch they will) it will leave the door open for all of there allies in competition in turn to come feeding back on them like vultures on a wounded animal out in the desert. you have to remember the economy also, dell is not selling the amount of computers that they were back in pre-9/11. (hell pre-bush for that matter) nor are a lot of the other pc manufacturers. so microsoft is getting desperate for more revenue on there high maintainance business model that they built in a healthier economy. wall street up-dated there pc’s long ago, but the average homeowner and renter across the nation cant afford too under this economy. so congradulations, wall street once again cash’s out the economy (with the help of a false war) and nobody can afford there software (microsoft) and then in turn they go after the little guy (free/linux/unix) ahahahahaaaa

Listen to Security Now Episode # 93
http://www.grc.com/SecurityNow.htm#93
Microsoft Patent Wars

Leo and I tackle the past, present and future of software patents. Our discussion of this non-security topic was triggered by Microsoft�s recent declaration that since free and open source software (FOSS) was infringing at least 235 of their software patents, someone ought to be paying them.

I don’t think he really answered the question. So he notes that IBM, HP, and Fujitsu doesn’t list infringements - but do these companies claim Linux infringes, and imply that users are liable? Didn’t think so.

The only real reason he mentioned is that people will challenge the patents. I can understand that worries him, since Microsoft is liable to lose.

The real answer is of course that if the patents are identified, free software will quickly be rewritten to not be infringing - and this is the last thing Microsoft wants.

Is anyone else reminded (at least somewhat) of the movies “Hackers” and “Anti-Trust”? I can’t help but notice the similarities abound in all 3 situations.

Let me get this straight… Microsoft, who stomped Apple on the look and feel issue 20 years ago, is now alleging that because Linux uses a graphic interface that it infringes on Microsoft??? Perhaps Apple should reopen their issue against Microsoft. Also, how can a Linux kernel infringe on anything Microsoft publishes since the Linux kernel was derived from Unix and Minix both of which predate DOS???

Wesley,

I like the Joseph MCarthy implication about secret lists. Supposedly, the people on McCarthy’s list were a secret, but in fact, the list was previously published by the Secretary of State in 1946. But, still a good analogy, one that rings well with those reading this article.

And, of course, anyone who violates a software patent myst be a Commie. Look at Stallworth, a Socialist if I ever saw one!

“On 9th February, 1950, at a meeting of the Republican Women’s Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, McCarthy claimed that he had a list of 205 people in the State Department that were known to be members of the American Communist Party”.

RE: Keith Humm… somewhere near the start, and various others. Are you lot 14 and using your computers in your bedrooms? You compare Open Office to MS Word… Are you even aware that once upon a time there was an application called Wordperfect, which apparently had the word processor market all stitched up in its day. With all this talk about patents I notice that no one has even mentioned the granddaddy of computer IP, Xerox. Xerox PARC developed so much of what companies like MS are claiming as their IP… years before MS came along and started behaving like a bully in the playground. When you wonder why no one is bothering to push this through the courts, think on this, if someone takes MS to court over this and the court decides that software is not actually patentable the company who took MS to court also loses as their own patent profile becomes worthless. So, I will ignore all this talk of patent infringement. who cares?

” Why doesn’t Microsoft identify the specific patents and explain what specific aspects of free software infringe them. I did ask Gutierrez that question, and here was his answer: “We do. But in private conversations in the process of licensing discussions with companies that are looking in good faith for ways of resolving the situation.” ”

There are actually two issues here; one I tried to raise in a comment which wasn’t posted, and one in the nature of the patent itself.

My unposted comment had to do with the nature of the Free/Libre and Open Source Software community, which prizes openness above many other values. Ie, if you allege a bug, and refuse to get specific, you get the scorn and comtempt of even those unconnected with the program you are alleging a bug in. So if Microsoft (in effect) alleges a bug in the development process itself - Still, 235 is a lot of alleged infringements. “This is not a case of some accidental, unknowing infringement,” says Microsoft’s licensing chief, Horacio Gutierrez. “There is an overwhelming number of patents being infringed.” -, but refuses to be more specific, it deserves all the scorn and contempt the F/LOSS community can pour upon it.

Secondly, the patent process is supposed to be all about opening the floodgates of development by disclosing all new techniques and developments - or it was, originally. Allegations about deliberate software patent infringements, that cannot be disclosed in public, while the allegations themselves are being made publically, is a violation of the whole purpose of the patent system itself; besides bringing up - for far too many people it seems - memories of one Senator McCarthy.

Ah, Microsoft brings back memories of junior high school: “Gimme your lunch money and I won’t beat you up.”

the ability to highlight (select) multiple items in a list, and then perform a simultaneous action on all those items with a single key (delete, move, copy, etc).

Ray Olsten: When you say this does not exist in “pre-Windows UIs”, I can only assume you are ignoring MacOS, since this trivial idea was described there since the earliest versions. Prior art all over the place…

Joshua: “Not a proponent of free software” - so you basically scrupulously avoid using it? That must be quite constraining.

Greg (San Diego): GPL car - a deliberate or inadvertent category error? Did you ever stop to wonder how the programmers who write/contribute to free software projects manage to eat, pay mortgages, send their kids to school, and buy cars and gas? I don’t think too many GPL licensors are homeless (with possible exception of RMS:) - How would you explain that?

I am very glad that you did ask why they didn’t choose the public path. However the answer doesn’t make sense. The Linux kernel, like many open source projects, is a public effort. For them to be valid, they shouldn’t consult with companies that use their software, because there will always be distributions made for no profit.

They pursue private discussions with companies so they can prey on their fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) regarding Linux. This issue will never be resolved if Microsoft keeps their discussions private. It will just provide them with an endless source of income from Linux vendors. Fortunately/unfortunately the Linux kernel is not directed by the vendors, it’s direction is given by Linus Torvalds. As such if they need to confer with anyone regarding Linux (which is just the kernel), they need to do so with Linus and not companies.

In time I will have a page describing more points here.

The root of the problem lies in the Patent Office and the U.S. Legal System. It has been well known for years that the USPTO is issuing floods of truly groundless patents in areas where they have absolutely NO knowlege, education or experience. As long as companies hire lawyers to file thousands of patent applications and the USPTO continues issuing them, then whichever company can marshall the largest war chest to fund the infringement-lawsuit battle will continue to prevail. This is simply because it is much cheaper for someone like Novell to settle and let Microsoft pay them than it is to “Win” over a “principle” in court.

The fertilizer which is nourishing these roots is FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. The harvest that Big Industry is greedily seeking is money, and that money is being stolen from EVERYONE’S pockets.

It is time to overhaul the USPTO. Programming patents should perhaps not be disallowed, but at least the “bar” to be hurtled for a company to get one needs to be seriously raised. Also, as far as the U.S. Legal System goes, if a company presses a Patent Infringement lawsuit and it is found that they are wrong or that the patent is invalid, and it is determined to have been done in an uncompetitive or predatory way, then they should be fined ALL court and legal costs PLUS a penalty based on an order of magnitude higher than the supposed “losses” claimed in their suit, or a significant percentage of the company’s net worth - say 50% to 75% - whichever is higher.

The “Golden Rule” should NOT be: He with the MOST Gold Rules!

Micro(fraud) distribute GPL covered software. Will they sue themselves? Why distribute software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows_Services_For_Unix
that they alledge infringe their patents?
Interestly, Micro(fraud) benefits from Free Software! and choose carefully which one to attack.

From where did Microsoft get its TCP/IP stack from?? Look closely and you will find the answer in UNIX.

What Microsoft & the like are doing is patenting (after mass adoption by the masses) standard programming techniques and styles.

It’s easy to do if you have boat loads of money to burn.

They are then using these patents to intimidate businesses into abandoning free software.

This only succeeds because patent offices, politicians, and the judicial system are completely ignorant of the software industry and it’s standand techniques. This should come as a surprise to no one as the software industry itself has a huge deficit of knowlegeble and competent workers.

Something to think about concerning Microsoft and F/OSS software and some possible violations of their own:

The Windows networking stack was derived from mainly BSD code. Quite a bit of NT tech came from work that originated with Smalltalk, OS/2 and other operating systems and software packages/languages outside of Redmond. The GUI look and feel arguments were already essentially voided by the courts during the MS/Apple conflagration. There are tons of other examples you can make. For instance: VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, and other “office productivity” software packages that predate anything MS has to offer.

Take a look at these two IBM patents, and just consider for a moment, where in Windows software (especially in Vista) have you seen these before (and note the dates of the patents themselves, in regards to when IBM and MS had their last major cross-licensing agreement back in the late 80’s and early 90’s).

IBM’s “Window Manager” Patent

A graphical user interface to desktop documents presents a visual display of visual summaries extracted from still image files, video image files, presentation slide documents, and word processing documents that include figures therein, in a computer file system, in response to a computer user requesting a directory listing. The user can select a visual summaries to cause the computer to search for files/documents containing similar images. The visual summaries can be presented in a hierarchy, with the top level of the hierarchy containing one visual summary per file/document, the next level containing visual summaries of all images in each file/document, and the lowest level containing visual summaries of each individual component, if any, in each image in a document. Further, for an alpha-numeric document having no images, the corresponding visual summary can be a visual representation of the appearance of a portion of the document, such as a portion of the first page of the document.

Exactly, what are these patents as mentioned by many other folks here. If you ask me, it sure sounds like Big Boy Microsoft is threatened by the Open Source and FOSS world. Good. Technology continues to be the way of the future - sooner or later Microsoft is going to have to realize that it isn’t always going to be the only ‘guy’ on the field. Seriously Microsoft, just exactly how badly is this hurting your pocketbook and how much will you be spending in legal fees, employee time, etc. to get this through - is it really worth it? Sure, principles, blah blah blah, but the point is that a lot of these other FOSS and open source programs have something to offer that Microsoft previously did not.
Exactly where is the the listing of all of the thousands of patents Microsoft has on mathematical 0’s and 1’s and a vast array of words? It sounds to me like anyone who writes any software is at risk of infringing on a ‘Microsoft Patent’ that God only knows existed. Again, I reiterate, you can’t own everything.
If you’re concerned that something might be better than what you have - here’s a thought - make an honorable attempt to work with that company or individual, but instead since you have a nearly infinite supply of financial resources, you wait until you can slap the little guy (yes, I realize some bigger guys too) in the face.
Now it might sounds like I’m a programmer and developer myself, but I truly am not. I am in the field and am truly bewildered by the constant garbage that goes on involving Microsoft…perhaps if all of this money that is being so wisely spent was invested in other research, we may have more health science breakthroughs, or less depletion of natural resources.
Well enough Microsoft bashing - Hat’s of to Linux, Open Office and the rest of the FOSS & Open Source World!

Actually this post is a “seek for advice” one. SInce MS puts such allegations on web a I find myself in the middle of laughs and accusations of using not so legal software (I’m a debian user)from people around me. So MS allegations on midia like this one is causing me some constraints. The advice I want from you is: is it possible for me to sue MS since these so clamed (but not proved) patents violations are leading me to personal confrontation with people of personal circle of relationship? These constraints that arise from MS allegations are getting me a little disturbed.

All software is based on ‘prior art’ - the opening or closing of a switch. Repeating this act very quickly does not make it innovative! Furthermore, a sufficiently large sequence of randomly generated bits will contain, within it, all software ever written, past, present or future. Thus, to prove that any software is ‘intellectual property’, it would be necessary to prove that it was not produced ‘at random’ - and how would you do that?

It would be really interesting to see how this would play out in court. I am not too familiar with patent law, but it would seem to me that Microsoft would be on pretty shaky ground,in terms of conceptual IP. Operating systems with graphical interfaces were in abundance long before MS Windows appeared on the scene. Unix graphical shells had concepts similar to the taskbar / start menu long before Windows 95 arrived. The Windows NT kernel is widely considered to be a derivation of Digital Equipment Corp’s VMS operating system and was worked on by many of the same developers. Does this make NT/2000/XP a rip-off of VMS? Not necessarily; programmers who have found that a concept works well once are bound to come up with the same or similar approaches on future projects. Also, software development has always been constrained to a certain extent by hardware limitations; there are only so many efficient ways of accomplishing the same task on the same hardware. Developers are bound to come up with similar ideas, even working independently, since hardware interfaces dictate how software may use the system. Think about it from a high-level perspective…How many ways are there for a user to interact with a mouse and a keyboard? I have a hard time believing that Microsoft could win or would even pursue any lawsuit based on kernel architecture. If they did and won, it would surely provoke a landslide of similar suits against Microsoft on behalf of IBM, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, and Sun Microsystems

Roger: Why did you not report on the SCO vs. IBM fiasco, where MS seems to have financed the same Linux patent challenges via a sock puppet corporation? (see http://www.lamlaw.com/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=141)

God bless Richard Stallman for peering 20 years into the future and anticipating the kind of bogus tactics that MS and others would use to try and kill free software. I would love to see some of these nonsense software patents reach the Supreme Court which just recently ruled on the “obviousness” of combining two prior ideas. If Stallman calls MS’s patent bluff and drags them into court, the fireworks will be interesting indeed to watch.

I think this is all very interesting.
I use win2k and xp and linux.
And will use them as I choose leagle or not till I die. If some freak with a law degree want to sue me fine.
I have nothing and you will get nothing.
Business will go on just fine.
Stall Stall Stall we only live so long, Stall again.

I’ve always heard you can not patent an idea. You can copyright the code or the algorithm but not an idea. I would like to see these so called patents. I think most if not all could be shot down. It all comes down to money, money to defend. I hope the open source community defends itself with whatever means we have. If the business community wants to stand by, than let them.
I am not sweating anything about this, microsoft will ultimately take a swifter beating than the one that is coming anyway. Sounds like a good short play to me

I’m a software developer, and having just looked over some of the patents held by Microsoft I believe my profession is under a serious threat if any of these are to be taken seriously. I see patents for absolutely trivial and obvious solutions to problems. Take this example, which is supposed to “ensure… the smooth flow of electronic ink”. How? By placing e-ink events into a separate queue and assigning the highest priority to them! That may sound technical, but I assure you that every programmer reading this is smacking his forehead right now. The award of this patent is absolutely unjustifiable. Event queues and priorities are standard tools for approaching this kind of problem.

If the USPTO continues to allow patents for such inconsequential methods, it may well soon become impossible to program anything without violating one patent or another.

If MS’ claims against Linux and other FOSS is of a similar nature, it will at the very least expose the brokenness of the system for all to see. Maybe then we’ll finally see some action toward correcting the travesty that software patents represent.

Patents and paying for software might just be a good thing. As a programmer, I also need to pay the bills and I haven’t had any luck finding a gpl car I can take to work…

This is just MS trying to scare costumers from other alternatives back to SM Vista etc.
There is lots of prior art to what I have seen so far.

How about we as Linux users and/or companies do not request a declaratory judgment to protect our investments, maybe that way we can end this “controversy”. Anyone up for it?

Is MS just trying to start a war of attrition here? It seems to me that a series of law suits and patent infringement cases, and then counter suits by other companies as suggested in the main article, would be long and drawn out and very expensive. Regardless of their legal validity, such suits could end up costing both sides massive amounts of cash. Could any of these companies really hold out against MS’s hoard?

For Kaj Kandler–
Yes, you’re right that the Linux kernel, while covered by GPL, is not a GNU project. Its copyright status is a mess, because Linus Torvalds did not, at least in the early days, ask contributors to assign him their copyrights the way Stallman did for GNU contributors. Though Torvalds did choose to use the GPL license, he also did, as you say, choose a version of it that will not automatically shift to subsequent versions, as most GPLs do. So Stallman definitely doesn’t control the kernel, and most people I spoke to assumed that Torvalds effectively controls it at this point. (He and a handful of corporations who are deferential to him, like ibm and red hat, probably own most of the copyrights at this point.) And most people also suspect he will not switch to v3, at least not immediately. Nevertheless, there are key parts of the typical Linux operating system distribution, like the GNU G compiler and the C library which are under Stallman’s control. And nobody wants to start having a fork between Linux distributions that use a GNUv3 G compiler and Linux distributions that use a GNUv2 G compiler, as I understand it.

Joshua: MS likes software patents; they’ve attempted to lobby the EU to get them harmonized and adopted continent-wide, and failed due to the efforts of the FSF. MS has stated in the EC antitrust case (still ongoing) that it has patented communications protocols in the US and EU and therefore cannot abide by the antitrust behavioral remedy of RAND licensing them (..since 2004). However, the EC struck down these claims as non-innovative. Microsoft could make itself a killing by selling it’s non-innovative protocols. You might notice that MS has itself gone after many businesses using GNU/Linux, so what type of business practices is software patenting fostering? All the big players cross-license their patents and then sue anyone who doesn’t…sounds like a great place for small inventors. Also see Blackboard for another bad patent saga on education software, trying to make a government-granted monopoly there. If they hadn’t budged, you could only get software from them, at the dictate of their whims on pricing.

then MS will hten be able to “freely” take whatever they want from anyone and anywhere and use it freely in their systems. They have the $ and power to do

Well of course they do, they can do anything they want because antitrust remedies have done nothing to restore competitipon to the marketplace, and in fact MS has increased marketshare. However, in the utopian case that laws actually mattered to Microsoft, copyright still protects that code and software. Imagine a book being both copyrighted and patented–crazy.

Anyways, MS doesn’t care about laws as seen in Stac v Microsoft, Burst v Microsoft, Mosaic v Microsoft, should I go on?

I’ve seen many posts against Microsoft for using “acquired” patents.

It seems to me that patents are property that have value and can therefore be bought and sold. Using this argument is not very smart.

It’s laughable that the alleged infringements aren’t made public, however I’m sure there is no attempt to “bluff” on the part of Microsoft.

I’d like to see Microsoft lose any lawsuit filed, but should they win, I hope they get $.000001 for each copy of Linux or Open Office sold.

Thanks for presenting an informative article. I especially loved the background on the Novell/Microsoft deal and the conditions that Richard Stallmann puts on being interviewed.

However, I think at the end the article gives the impression, that the changes to the proposed GPL V3, made after the Novell/Microsoft deal became public, affect Linux (or any current software). First, I thought the GPL V3 is still under debate and not yet applied to any software licensed. Second, this kind of change does, to the best of my understanding, not affect the Linux kernel.

The reason is that Linus did (does) not require that contributions are attributed to the FSF or a similar institution. And the Linux kernel, as I understand it has a modified GPL V2 license, which removed the provision, that any user can license the code also under any successor of the GPL license. The change means the license of the Linux kernel is fixed. Off course, this provision does not apply to all the GNU utilities in a Linux distribution, which are under the FSF’s control.

The lack of copyright attribution to a central body, means one needed to track down all authors to ask for a change in license, or recreate the code in question. As often the contribution is only a part of the code, like a bug fix or a performance improvement, this disentanglement is very difficult to achieve. And tracking down contributers for their consent is not easy either. Some might not even live any more.

As far as I know, Linus has not entertained a change of license for his own contributions to the kernel nor the effort to make such a change. Therefore it is unclear how this change will really affect the license of Linux as a whole.

The article is an interesting read, but it contains some inaccurate statements.

Linux is a kernel for an operating system, not an operating system per se as said in the article. By the way, Linux is licensed by GNU’s licence. So, why is it a problem to call GNU/Linux GNU/Linux instead of Linux?

An open source licence is essentially the same as a GNU licence. There are other licences that are called ‘open source’ by their inventors or some companies for marketing or other reasons, but unless a licence is essentially compatible with GNU’s GPL, it is *not* a ‘open source’ licence. The terms ‘free software’ and ‘open source’ are both essentially synonyms to ’software licenced according to GPL’. The term ‘open source’ originates from the Debian project and was first defined in Debian’s Free Software Guidelines [1], from which the Open Source Definition evolved [2].

There are some good articles about ‘free software’ and ‘open source’ on wikipedia.

The section about ‘open source’ versus ‘free software’ exaggerates any differences between the two terms.

[1] http://www.de.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
[2] http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

Seems Microsoft is covering all bases here!
They’re targeting the applications that all organisations use on a daily basis - word-processing, email, web browsers, spreadsheets and the operating system. All business would grind to a halt instantly without these apps. Yet these are the very core of successful Open Source software - and Microsoft’s dominance to date. It’s easy to see why large corporates are ’shaking at the thoughts of the uncertainty this claim causes.
It also adds more doubt to the decision process of large organisations thinking of converting to Open Source. I guess many of them might wait and see what happens here? Which will suit Microsoft just fine!

Anthony Meagher

Another example of how M$ “borrows” from other companies, is their .NET platform.

The .NET platform has a virtual machine called the CLR (Common Language Runtime). It is basically the exact same thing as the JVM (Java Virtual Machine), which was made public about 6 years earlier than .NET. But CLR only runs on Windows, where JVM runs on just about everything which has an electronic pulse (in example more than 2 billion mobile devices).

The primary language of .NET is C#. C# version 1.0 was merely a copy of Sun’s Java. Even many of the C# classes is called the same as in Java.

Microsoft has been wanting to turn the pc into a DRM controlled appliance so they can control everything and everyone that attaches themselves and there products to the pc, that in turn- turns it into an intelectual poroduct of microsoft by design of its software alone residing on the particular pc in question, wether it be made by dell, HP, Sony, ect.. microsoft wants to assume patent control over it all (device+software+use) once it reach’s and is put into use by the consumer. that is there eventual monopolistic goal.

If this issue ever gets to courts, I only hope that the judge knows the history of computers, which would help to rule wisely

Unix systems were around way before Microsoft Windows (or even DOS). If Microsoft patented something they took from Unix, that should be annulled.

Speaking of GUI, Microsoft used tons of GUI ideas from Mac OS.

The world is so closely inter-related today that it’s often hard to definitevely tell things apart.

Then again, Moglen is right, the actual battle will first occur in the legal field.

Think ahead - if the patent Armageddon indeed occurs, what would life be after?

is there anyone that is really concerned about this, i mean just your average user, not corporate america or corporate anywhere?
it seems to me MS is just trying to scare people into paying “protection money” much like an organised crime syndicate that was once very powerful in america.
if this is what software vendors are reduced to, i am glad i’m using gnu/linux.
one issue that should be well considered by MS is that if it comes to a court decision, they may happen to find GPL’d code in their software, which has the potential to break MS by forcing them to comply to the GPL and distribute their source code….
atleast thats how i see it here in australia, what does everyone else think?

The point that people are missing is that if the patents that MS is trying to enforce (perhaps legally) are shot down - and FOSS wins the battle that software is mathematical and not able to be patented . . . then MS will hten be able to “freely” take whatever they want from anyone and anywhere and use it freely in their systems. They have the $ and power to do so . . . and just completely overwhelm any competitor with sheer number and $. This is a win-win for MS - they either get the patent infringements upheld or they clear the way for themselves to hijack Google’s patents and they will have created the precedent that allows it.

Since I make my living writing software - I am not a proponent of free software. (Although I would love if my dentist believed that his ’service or goods’ should be free to the public)

In Germany the patent law says: “If you give the impression that your product is protected by patents, you have to tell interested people which patents are meant” (Not the exact wording). You should alter your patent law, i suppose.
And to those who talk about MS patents in the LINUX kernel - sorry, I can’t believe this, as the LINUX/UNIX kernel has been far more stable than MS OS for a long time.

I believe that the UI component that Microsoft will most vigorously claim to be “their IP” is the ability to highlight (select) multiple items in a list, and then perform a simultaneous action on all those items with a single key (delete, move, copy, etc). This capability was not available in any of the pre-Windows UI’s mentioned here, and credit should go where it is due. Microsoft will definitely win at least this little battle, and many more like it.

This is extortion. Pure and simple. Microsoft are a convicted predatory monopolist. RICO anyone?

A few more recursive acronyms for everyone. Linux Is Not UniX. When Linus started out he was trying to clone a Unix like O/S by the name of Minux or Minux Is Not UniX. These are long standing naming practices in the unixish world.

As for the subject at hand, I think M$ is just trying to blow smoke up Korporate Amerika and see what they can shake them down for. I defy anyone to come up with anything that M$ has been innovative with other than extremely buggy software. Vista, for example, has finally implemented ’soft links’ (look it up) that Linux had from day 1 and DEC first implemented in the late 1970s. I suppose M$ now wants a patent for their implementation of a 30 year old idea. The patent system needs to be overhauled and everyone at the patent office fired.

“Once you’ve made that statement from a public perspective, anybody in the world can go to court and ask for a declaratory judgment. That would spur potentially hundreds or thousands of lawsuits around the world, or reexaminations of patents around the world. Even if they’re perfectly good patents, it would create an administrative nightmare.”

In other words, they don’t want public scrutiny.

Isn’t this exactly what SCO did? Didn’t they essentially say “Our IP is in Linux, no we won’t say what it is unless you sign an NDA (and consequentially the world can’t examine it and see if we are telling the truth or lying).”

hey Roger, I think it’s interesting that this blog is powered by the GPL licensed Wordpress…I wonder what crazy MS patents that violates

Mr. Smith @ Microsoft has a strategy. I think that the overall strategy is to force FOSS to be pool its resources under a single entity one where the end user, developer, and distributor are clearly distingiushed. FOSS will then be easier to compete against becuse it would become subject to the same market forces i.e regulations, patents, customer accountability, and security threats that Microsoft is exposed to. By doing so Microsoft would then curb the innovation and free contribution of (end-users) developers and thus effectively destroy FOSS. However, the result on the consumer market would be the lack of apparent or even the possibilty of competition; thus it would become a sanctioned monopoly i.e. a regulated utility.

This is of a great concern because at the very core of the free market economy is competition. Case and point as evident in the regulated and unregulated energy markets without thorough and adequate governmental oversight companies can and will set themselves up for windfall profits at the detriment of the customer.

MicroFraud does not matter for much. Much like “The Prohibition.” Even they cannot stop the world. All you do is create a underground of innovation.

We, the mighty few will still use Linux. With great effect.

I have to admit to being fascinated by this article. While it seems a
fair and balanced, if a bit Microsoft biased, it ignores so much
background as to beggar belief.

Since when has Microsoft respected anyone’s patents? If they find a
competing technology they either buy it or copy it and crush the
competitor. This includes, but is not limited to, proven incidents of
stealing competitors code and incorporating it into their competing
products!

I think the Sendo incident is a classic in this regard:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/13/sendo_ms_settle/

Though i am not casting aspersions on CNN’s objective credentials, i
have to say that CNN’s coverage of the incident seemed to be in
Microsofts corner:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&q=sendo+microsoft+cnn&btnG=Search&meta=

I should also mention Microsoft’s well proven habit of co-opting
standards, then patenting them or minor variations/extensions of
them.

For example the enterprise wide authentication standard Kerberos was
extended and then denied to non windows platforms:
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/05/02/158204.shtml

Was that an interoperability move?

Where is this angle portrayed in this piece of the convicted
monopolist having to compete in a market place it could not corner?

I would request that the author look a bit more into the actual
meaning of patents and how they apply to Microsoft.

I’m sure an
objective view of its adherence to patent and copyright laws, versus
the track record of the open source community would be an interesting follow up piece.

Remember OS/2 an IBM & Microsoft Product?

“windows, dialog boxes etc.” — we used those on tty terminals no they weren’t as fancy but still the concept was the same. We would have liked to do it how its done now but memory and disk space was more expensive than the programers.

Multi-Color displays were in most cases prohibitively costly. I wonder who holds the patent on representing characters as a sequence of binary digits. Maybe IBM should be suing everyone for making a machine similar to the 402 accounting machine only based in silicon. Transistor gates are not much different from vacuum tube or relay gates for that matter

Too bad that the Free Software Foundation cannot say “You tried to destroy the concept of free software, therefor you are not permitted to distribute free software yourself”, thus stopping Microsoft from have a web browser, using TCP/IP networking, including virtual memory in it’s OS, threads, and other common OS concepts that have been around for 40 years.

The main problem I have is that Microsoft claims to have patents that if closely examined, are things that were invented by someone else, and not microsoft. I can think of plenty of examples offhand. For example, I really doubt that there is ANYTHING in the Linux Kernel that wasn’t in UNIX first (BEFORE MICROSOFT). As for GUI, Microsoft didn’t invent ANYTHING there. We all know how Microsoft ripped off Apple who bought patents from Xerox. X-windows has been around for a lot longer than windows (or has had a nicer look), so I really don’t see where Microsoft thinks they have patents there…..Oh yeah, Microsoft invented Truetype fonts….or did they….amazing how they are pretty much exactly the same as the antialiased fonts that the Woz invented for the Apple II 30 years ago….

Microsoft is losing it’s ability to steal quietly (not it’s ability to be innovative, as it’s really never been innovative).

I say we all bust out the windows 3.1 disks and go back in time tryin to load the mouse drivers into high memory! and play us some free ski!!! (or a good air hockey game)

“You only need to look at openoffice and office 97-2003 side by side to realise that Microsoft has a prior art case here. Even if they applied for late patents, their interface was still around first for many of the features available.

Similarly, Win95 was the first OS to deliver many of the things we see in gnome/kde.

Who knows about the kernel - the reason why you can bet your bottom dollar that Microsoft aren’t bluffing here is in the interfaces. They are unmistakably similar.
Posted By Keith Humm, Christchurch, New Zealand : May 14, 2007 10:43 am ”

Really? Maybe you have never heard of XEROX PARC’s computer efforts? Possibly the spreadsheet related aspects might have novelty, but for certain one has to look at Lotus 123 for spreadsheet prior art, and possibly a couple prior to that.

But the basics in windowed user interfaces certainly came 1st at Xerox PARC and possibly next at say Three Rivers Computers, maybe the MACINTOSH ??? If mouse driven commands and UI exsited before Excel in Windows, the question is can one get patent coverage in every new program from using a mouse? That will be one to earn Brad some suspenders…

It will be curious what specifics of the undisclosed Microsoft claims are upheld upon scrutiny, or maybe they have a dreaded Eola type patent - claiming a browser plugin is NEW? when in fact a browswer plug in is merely dynamically loadable code…which fundamentally is as old as the hills ( yet MS paid up to Eola? )

I guess Brad lost his suspenders on that one?? and is trying to get them back.

Dear Micro$oft:

It was stated back in the main article that “[M$] asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft’s patents.”

If you are truly holding patents which enable the creation of high quality software I have one question - why aren’t you using them?

I, for one, am tired of paying for bugs. When I buy a piece of software with the M$ logo on it it seems like the bug to software ratio is at least 5:1 - in favor of the bugs. I would love to be able to buy some software based on those patents you claim to have.

I forgot to give my city in my previous comment. Sorry.

Microsoft’s top lawyer says open source software violates exactly 235 entries in the firm’s vast patent portfolio.

This reminds me of the following: Senator Joseph McCarthy “claimed, according to press reports of the address [in Wheeling, West Virginia], to have in his hands a list of 205 members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring currently employed by “and shaping the policy of the State Department.” When later challenged to produce evidence for his charges McCarthy maintained that he was referring to Communist “party loyalists” or “bad risks” in the State Department, and in the moderated version of the Wheeling speech introduced into the Congressional Record on February 20, reprinte d below, he reduced the number of alleged Communists to 57.

McCarthy had no list at all. But it didn’t matter.”

http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/mccarthy.html

Giving a precise figure conveys the impression that you are talking about something real. Microsoft is nothing but the pinnacle of that enduring American profession, the con artist.

Drew, Monroe, La. wrote…

> I imagine M$ as a street thug with
> nothing in his pocket but his
> index finger pointed out.

Right idea, wrong finger.

“This is not a case of some accidental, unknowing infringement,”

But he won’t say which patents are being infringed. If the “infringers” know what they are infringing, secrecy is moot.

Further, does not the injured party have an obligation to attempt to minimize their losses? If my pipes burst and wreck my carpet, I could sue my landlord. I can’t keep the leak secret until my entire living room suite is ruined, then sue for new furniture. Keeping the infringement secret exacerbates the infringement ( it goes on for longer than it otherwise might), and ought to limit damages.

Finally, I’m not a lawyer, or American, but isn’t slander of title actionable in the US? If they were sued, Microsoft would have to justify their claims.

I’m a programmer because that’s what I love to do. I’d be happy to let you have what I have done for free. I’m also a musician, and I once wrote a song that sounded kinda like something I once heard. It had parts of something I once studied in a book. You can have that too. All this said, be careful not to get caught enjoying either one, because if for some reason what I have done appeals to you more than that done by someone who does it for a living, you may get sued. Oh wait, They agreed not to sue each others’ customers. - Give me a break.

Microsoft will probably not sue IBM or Sun Mircosystems (owner of Star Office) and cannot sue Linux because there is no Linux owner to sue.

So Microsoft’s strategy is probably to threaten Linux users who cannot afford the cost of patent infringement litigation and will accept to pay Microsoft some fee to avoid legal costs. Microsoft probably also uses clauses to prevent these companies to subsequently talk about the threat and settlement arrangement. This would be a blatant case of I protect you or I kill you.

Doing so, Microsoft avoids the cost of litigation, the challenge of a probably large number of junk patents, and the unpopularity of going after open source users.

All of this is made possible thanks to the inapplicability of the non-obvious clause for patents. It is indeed almost impossible to define what is obvious from what is not, especially after seeing a disclosure.

Microsoft experts and lawyers will always pretend that using the right button of a mouse is non-obvious while the rest of us will find this obvious.

All spreadsheet patents for example are small improvements over a really non-obvious invention: the spreadsheet as a concept which is over 20 years old.

Graphical user interfaces have been around for more than 20 years, all improvements from there are minor and obvious. The non-obvious concept was invented over 40 years ago at Xerox.

The Linux kernel concepts are based on developments done in the seventies at AT&T and elsewhere.

Microsoft itself might have been a great contributor to word processing over 20 years ago. But the patent law is not meant to grant infinite monopolies.

The solution for end users is to call for a broad reform of the patent law, communicate about Microsoft threats, and boycott Microsoft new products.

The same goes for Verizon. They patented in 1999 the idea to transform telephony signals into packets for which experiments where done in the seventies and many times thereafter.

Most comments show a clear lack of understanding of the patent system, especially its origins in the US Constitution.

Patents (and copyrights) are provided for in the US Constitution “to promote progress in the arts and sciences” by providing a “limited monopoly” to the inventor/artist. That “monopoly” is provided so that the artist/inventor can receive compensation for his/her investment in the work being protected. That monopoly is “limited” because the work is SUPPOSED to go into the public domain, so that others can build on it for greater progress, yet. The patent system was NOT intended to be an “easy street” or a roadblock to innovation, as it too often seems to be, today.

To that end, patents are supposed to be NOVEL and non-obvious to “one skilled in the art.” Both are frequently missing today, so too often it seems like patents are, “First one who thinks something up and files, WINS!”

Isn’t that exactly what the Microsoft lawyer said? If they were to specify the patents, they would be invalidated without Microsoft ever being able to make a penny off of them. They are selling the most pure vaporware.

That is why they had to pay Novell so much money to go into the deal. Otherwise, there was no reason for Novell to do so.

The SCOX suits were backed by MS specifically to see if such vague and unsubstantiated claims could be used as leverage to get paid. It hasn’t worked. Even the _judges_ in the case keep demanding that SCOX show what code was infringing, and SCOX will not or cannot do so. Just like Microsoft.

Folks, this game has already been played. Look at SCO. What did they accuse? Wasn’t it “millions” of lines of infringing code in Linux? But, they wouldn’t tell what it was because every time they did, it was instantly proven false. What was SCO’s stock price when they sued? Where is it now? Less than a buck?

In other news, Ford goes to owners of Toyota vehicles and explains that Toyota has violated some of Ford’s patents and they think the Toyota owner owes them money.

The following linked image is of Photon, which existed BEFORE Windows 95:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fd/Qnx_floppy.gif

But of course desktops were bound to evolve, maybe into something kind of similar to this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/75/Qnx621about2.png

To M$’s credit, I am confident all of you have heard of Win 95, but how many of you knew that Photon existed before today? Did you know that Win NT4.0 ran 16 bit OS/2 apps natively? Where did the NT4.0 kernel come from…

My point is simple - QDOS, Xerox, Apple, OS/2, QNX/Photon… It doesn’t matter. I’ll bet that on a good day even the AMIGA camp can throw in on this one. Micro$oft “borrows” all the time and will as long as it exists, just do not expect it to return the favor - EVER! You are expected to pay to play.

M$ is filled with childish greed, and feels threatened. And M$ likes its profit margins where they are. I have yet to pay $40.00 for Windows and Office combined but because of the threat of free software someone did: http://www.tunexp.com/news/windows-story-135.html. We need more of these kinds of threats, not less and only free software is going to provide it.

If it turns out that there is some minuscule kernel of truth to MS’s claims then everyone should keep in mind that M$ does not invent, it innovates. M$ should not be allowed to interfere with other entities who also wish to innovate. Especially when they are using M$ as their example of a successful business model worthy of emulation. They just want to “borrow” too.

M$ better should not be allowed to win a patent war because all the innovating they do is based on someone else inventing it. Patents should go to the inventors first. Let M$ pay a few royalties for a change.

If M$ wants to use FUD as its weapon of choice then let them, just don’t fall for it unless they reveal what the patent issues are. They are suggesting that they are “loaded for bear” I’m betting they’ve got nothing in the gun but blanks.

I imagine M$ as a street thug with nothing in his pocket but his index finger pointed out.

Microsoft is no better than any monoply we’ve had over the history of America. Microsoft is the perfect example of the same attitude the buisness leaders of the guilded age had. Robb them blind and sell it for more. It seems microsoft want to abuses these patent rights to take linux off the market so were all forced to pay ridicilous prices for the software. You can’t download anyhting off of microsoft site anymore without paying 20 bucks. It cost 20 bucks for a DVD encoder. Thats right 20 dollars who in the right mind is going to pay 20 dollars when you can easily find a piece of FREE software that does exactly the same thing. Microsoft is ridicilous when it comes to their buisness practices. I’m starting to not like microsoft any more. They want to make the IT industry cheap labor, so me as natural born citizen is going to get paid less for going into I.T. because some foriegner has a cheaper pay scale. Then they have endless lawsuits with linux. Microsoft should just give up, they already make enough money without robbing everyone blind.

whether or not M$ actually has any substantial claims, the publication of such a feat is foremost another stance of ingenious (?) legal marketing to scare potential customers into the womb of the mothership

When Microsoft put an infusion of cash into SCO, they were obviously looking to see if the “sue option” would even work.

Not being stupid, they must have concluded that they would have about zero chance of actually winning in court. Thus, their only approach is to threaten - after all, court cases cost money.

Microsoft probably figures 80-99% of the patents would be overturned by the courts, plus it would take years and years.

Anyone familiar with Windows programming will recognize Unix constructs EVERYWHERE. Most of Microsoft’s products are a rip off of someone elses work. Remember, Gates himself stole source code from the dumpsters of companies like Digital Research because he didn’t have the mettle for a formal education.

Well, perhaps this is just the next level of work required from the folks who support the GPL. How much work would be required to look at Microsoft’s patent portfolio, and find those 235 patents that need to be examined at and debunked? An open source wiki or database that listed software patents from all relevant tech companies, with relevant comments and relevant prior art, would be an extremely beneficial resource to the world at large. Is anyone building this?

Somebody further back there mentioned Win95 and KDE in the same sentence. KDE is a pretty fair clone of CDE(Common Desktop Environment), which is a Sun Microsystems product that predates Win95 by some years.

I hope no company is stupid enough to have Microsoft blackmail them into paying them for someone else’s software.

I hope companies realize that Microsoft will never actually take anyone to court for this, because they don’t have a leg to stand on. Their case would be obliterated once actual prior art searches, obviousness and failure to promptly take action after infringement is suspected, bring some reality to this FUD claim.

That would wipe their pretty number of 235 infringements to just about nothing. Instead, they love to just dangle this supposed thread of 235 infringements in front of everyone’s face and make the uninformed pay up.

This is the reason they don’t specify which patents they’re talking about, as their patents would be invalidated even without going to court. And of course they won’t sue developers, as they would have to be specific about the patents they’re talking about in that case too. Better to just scare customers with vague threats instead.

I wonder if anyone could sue Microsoft of trying to hurt their business with unsubstantiated claims though. It should be illegal to “compete” by what basically comes down to slander.

It would be good to investigate the difference in efficiency between the US and European companies due to paying this extra “tax”. And whether large American companies taxing free software in this way will influence EU governments in their decisions to grant (or not) software patents. By moving too early MSFT may be killing the golden goose as far as software patent revenue in Europe.

The logical step would be to create the initiative to analyse Microsoft`s Patents and fid out which is really infringed and how it can be avoided.

Interesting paradox, Microsoft can’t patent it’s most powerful product - FUD Fear,Uncertainty,& Doubt. That is what this is all about. A powerful rich monopoly losing its grip on its own Market, it can’t even compete with itself. Witness Vista’s lackluster showing against XP, its own product. Dell recently began offering XP again because consumers don’t want Vista, they want XP. Microsoft is stuck. They can’t innovate or they lose their base, yet they can’t generate revenue unless they force the base to upgrade. Hence the lawsuits as a new revenue stream. FUD - Microsoft’s only real asset.

When Microsoft loses this suit, they will become a classic college course must read- how to destroy a multi-billion dollar business by imploding.

Okay… I knew someone was eventually going to bring up Xerox. But let’s not forget that before Xerox was playing with these user interface elements, they had seen Doug Englebart’s “Mother of All Demos” which was funded by (D)ARPA.

I wonder if there’s a way to appeal to the many eyes of the open source community to have each of Microsoft’s patent filings examined and evaluated and rated based on it’s likelihood to be thought to infringe and then the likelihood that it would actually stand up in court?

Assuming there are maybe 10,000,000 people in the world with sufficient technical skill to understand the patents, and maybe one in a thousand might have the time to devote to such a project, we’re still talking about 10,000 geeks. Competent legal authority might be more difficult to find. Patent IP can be tricky, and the IP lawyers I know are highly paid and hard worked. So the liklihood they’ll be able to contribute to such a plan is low unless there’s some upside in terms of new business generation, personal reputation enhancement, etc.

1 particular *you lawyerly folks will have fun with this*:
wasn’t “open office” a sun microsystems product before they “gave” the code away?
why didn’t msft sue before now?
why the multi-year delay?
MSFT seems to be the Alfred E. Newman of software, just like the car makers before them!

Don’t forget that prior art and obviousness are very strong determining factors in this sort of patent case. Claiming a patent in 2003 for something that all software vendors that create graphic user interfaces have been using since the early ’90s will probably be overturned, especially if MS isn’t the company that first did it (even if they did license it later).

Similarly, Win95 was the first OS to deliver many of the things we see in gnome/kde.

Windows 95 wasn’t even the first OS on x86 hardware to use many of the features which MS fans claim are MS innovations. See OS/2’s WorkPlace Shell and PC/GEOS for two obvious examples.

Of course Microsoft’s entire strategy is based on the view that they have valid patents.

A while ago I did an evaluation of publicly published patents from uspto.gov. These patents covered a variety of things (there were no software patents on the list). At the end of the evaluation I had determined that less than 5% of these patents was valid. I have no reason to believe that patents covering software are any different.

What does this mean? It means that there are severe structural problems in the Patent Office. These problems are so severe that the only option I see is to shut down granting of patents until after a complete inquiry is completed, and it’s conclusions set into place with legislation.

You may not believe me - but consider TELEFLEX vs KSR. The invalid patent in question could have cost KSR 10s of millions of dollars. If I am only partially right, and 50% of patents are invalid, the cost to the United States probably approaches 10 Trillion dollars every year - a cost that makes American firms less competitive, that costs the American consumer (both in fewer jobs and higher costs for goods), and is strangling the economy.

Consider - it’s been recently discovered that a Russian scientist invented the LED in the late 1930s. As of yet the Patent Office has not invalidated any of the LED patents that exist, and appears to have no plan to. and even if they did it would not recompense those who paid for the right to use the patents, or who had to pay more because of patents that were invalid under both the “First to Invent” and “First to File” systems.

BTW - I am from Canada. In today’s international marketplace, what was once only of interest inside your national borders now affects me too.

The interface violations caught my eye immediately. Xerox licensed to Apple, and Apple subsequently (perhaps foolishly) licensed interface elements to Microsoft. But MS has not licensed elements to FOSS. I guess my question is: how many of the patents MS claims it owns and are infringed belong only to MS, and are not derived from the original Xerox or Apple patents?

As far as Open Office goes, remember that the original user interface for these products was licensed from Apple by Microsoft in return for Microsoft producing a version of Office for the Mac.

Microsoft may not be disclosing it’s patents because it is afraid of IBM. IBM has the best patent portfolio in the world, which it generally uses for defensive purposes. It is also Microsoft’s biggest competitor (not Google like everyone thinks). Given the quality and long-term depth of IBM research I’d bet that if it came to a war over patents Microsoft would be holding the short stick.

To me this sounds like a desperation move on the part of Microsoft. Their markets are saturated, Vista is ho-hum, and their revenues are stagnant. If they are going after Linux using legal means rather than by competing through innovation it means they are out of ideas.

It is time to sell or short MSFT.

“Similarly, Win95 was the first OS to deliver many of the things we see in gnome/kde.”

By similar reasoning Apple should have no problem suing Microsoft. Many of the elements in Windows interface where copied from the older Mac computers.

Who knows about the kernel - the reason why you can bet your bottom dollar that Microsoft aren’t bluffing here is in the interfaces. They are unmistakably similar.

Please don’t start with that argument or else the mac zealots will pounce. (As they should when faced with the “Win95 interface was the first to…” story)

You only need to look at openoffice and office 97-2003 side by side to realise that Microsoft has a prior art case here. Even if they applied for late patents, their interface was still around first for many of the features available.

Similarly, Win95 was the first OS to deliver many of the things we see in gnome/kde.

Who knows about the kernel - the reason why you can bet your bottom dollar that Microsoft aren’t bluffing here is in the interfaces. They are unmistakably similar.

This is another “drive-by” patent attack, without even a real clear target. Who does Microsoft have “good faith” discussion with on Linux? Torvalds? Individual developers?

I’ve already been through this whole process twice, both with SCO vs. Linux and another proprietary OS vendor. In 99.99% of the example cases (when they were *finally* disclosed) we were able to determine prior art (the Linux code pre-dated the “patent” by several years) or obviousness (using a low-level hardware API to access, erm, well, hardware functions).

In one case, a patent refered to drop-shadowed representations, something that monks have been doing by hand since the 3rd century. How is that idea patentable??

This is more big-company FUD being thrown at a competitor, trying to win by the hallowed American practice of hiring more lawyers than the other guy.

When tried before the court of media opinion, no one wins. The ugly problem with wide disclosure is that writers and IT persons opposed to the idea of Intellectual Property altogether, would take a cursory look at the patents, declare them all obvious and resume their attacks against Microsoft.

In SCO vs. IBM, SCO refused to identify the elements of the source code allegedly at issue. It turns out, the emperor didn’t have any cloths on. Why should we believe that the situation is different here? De ja vu all over again.
Anyway, as was opaquely stated by Mr. Gutierrez, as long as there is a lot of grist for FUD, Fortune 500 companies would prefer settling with a cross license agreement to fighting a $3M fight over a likely frivolous patent claim. It is diversionary to their primary line of business and, thus, not good business.
Businesses are also not in the business of protecting the small fry, be they consumers or other businesses.
I think it must be the U.S. Congress that puts an end to patenting obvious algorithms.