Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 17th Nov 2006 13:23 UTC, submitted by Tanked
In comments confirming the open-source community's suspicions, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Thursday declared his belief that the Linux operating system infringes on Microsoft's intellectual property. In a question-and-answer session after his keynote speech at the Professional Association for SQL Server conference in Seattle, Ballmer said Microsoft was motivated to sign a deal with SUSE Linux distributor Novell earlier this month because Linux "uses our intellectual property" and Microsoft wanted to "get the appropriate economic return for our shareholders from our innovation."
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Member since:
2006-02-17
You cannot patent an "idea". You can only patent an "invention," which is further defined as a device, method, process, or substance that is novel, useful, and inbovious to one skilled in the art. Further, the patent itself requires that the patent is sufficiently detailed that a person skilled in the art can make use of it, and it is limited explicitly to claims made in the patent.
At current, software patents are only valid in the USA, and almost all of them have been challenged have failed when tested in court. For example, MS filesystem patents all cover Windows-specific implementations of technology that pre-existed. Even if they don't fail on the basis of novelty, in practice they fail the obviousness test because they are simply represent a decision by the company on how to do a common thing in such a way as to interoperate with their own product.