Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 18th Jul 2007 22:09 UTC, submitted by Kishe
Microsoft says software that's licensed under a new version of a popular open source license isn't covered by the patent protection deal it recently signed with desktop Linux distributor Linspire. In a posting on its Web site, Microsoft said the Linspire client software protected by the patent deal doesn't include any parts of the distribution that "comprise or include Foundry Products, Clone Products, GPLv3 Software, or Other Excluded Products." The document was published on July 5, three weeks after Microsoft struck a deal with Linspire through which Linspire's customers are indemnified against Microsoft's patent claims against Linux users.
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Member since:
2006-05-26
It's largely a high stakes game of poker. I would be surprised if Microsoft didn't show at least one patent they were confident they could win on, perhaps something they've already tested in court, to the people that matter that they made the deals with. At least, that's how I would go about it. Granted, software patents aren't respected everywhere, but if they're respected enough in a large enough portion of the market for software, does it matter all that much?
Thus, I strongly suspect that this will come to legal blows, and it won't be pretty. I won't try to predict who would win, as I don't have enough information (I'm speculating in the previous paragraph, but it makes enough sense that it could be truth) but I do know with certainty that in US law (which is at least one major market where software patents are respected) you can't be forced into new terms of a contract that you didn't sign up for, and it may even be possible that Microsoft won't have to disclose all of their patent claims in court, as it would only require a single patent that the court doesn't knock down for the whole arrangement to have meaning.
So, I don't think this will harm Microsoft in any real way: they aren't beholden to GPLv3 with the deal they made, if only because you can't change terms of a contract after the fact in US law without all parties agreeing to it, and that's what anyone that's had any real experience in US law and business will tell you: it may not matter much about the other details, because that one trumps them all.