Submitted by Today EFF, joined by Public Knowledge, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and the Apache Software Foundation, filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case in which Microsoft is trying to make it easier to invalidate an issued U.S. patent. If successful, this challenge should help in the fight against bad patents by lowering the standard required to prove that the patent is invalid to the same one required to prove infringement. It should especially help the free and open source community.
Bullshit.
http://www.osnews.com/story/23860/Microsoft_Slaps_Motorola_with_Pat…
The headline is a bit misleading but the body of the story is right, Microsoft does want the standard of evidence for invalidating a patent lowered. Groklaw has a good summary of the situation, you should check it out. This would make it easier for Microsofts own patents to be invalidated but they probably think they have good enough lawyers that they can deal.
MS just wants to make it easy to stop the patent trolls that hit them up on a regular. Ms already knows that if Open Source companies give away their software (Selling services like Red Hat or Ubuntu or just giving it away like Google) they are not gonna be able to sue them anyway. This is why MS or Apple have not sued Google over Android but is suing companies the implement and resell it.
Yeah, the irony wasn’t lost on me. But when I re-read the title I originally used, it’s true that in my enthusiasm for keeping the title short, I removed some of the important information. Surely Microsoft doesn’t want to eliminate what it considers to be legitimate software patents, only those of the patent troll variety. Baby steps, I guess.
Edited 2010-10-02 17:37 UTC
How is it bullshit? have you read the patent beyond just the title of it? you’ll find that the patents Microsoft has (which Motorola violated) are very specific and not broad generalised ideas that could cover almost anything you want. Yes, I know it is ‘cool’ to ‘hate Microsoft’ or ‘hate Apple’ but even a broken clock is correct twice a day.
the original headline stated “EFF and Microsoft to eliminate software patents” Which was not true and got changed. He was calling bullshit on the original title
Edited 2010-10-03 19:28 UTC
Not if you smash it with a hammer and its hands go flying all over the place.
It is unlikely that Motorola’s software actually does violate the named microsoft patents. Two of them for example are FAT patents, for which the Linux kernel has a work-around.
http://www.osnews.com/story/21766/Linux_Kernel_Patch_Works_Around_M…
Yes, but have Motorola used the work around version or are they still shipping the version that violates the patents? You’ll have to establish that what Motorola is using is based off the alternative way of handling the parts which are patented. Personally I think Motorola should just bite the bullet, pay Microsoft the flat rate of $300,000 for FAT/FAT32/exFAT and be done with it. Considering the number of devices they sell it would be minuscule on a per-unit basis.
As a company MS does this for porfit, or actually reduce the costs. As far as I know the money they had to pay for the patents – Eolas being the highest one 0.5 billion dollars – is far more than the money they make when they sue, which is also much rarer.
But this temporary alliance might actually be a good step in fixing the situation.
Motorola and Google also joined?