Since it’s Easter (it spans two days in The Netherlands), what better to talk about than patents? Microsoft has just bought most of AOL’s patents, and took up a license for the remainder bit they didn’t buy. Microsoft also bought all the patents belonging to AOL subsidiary Netscape. Uh-oh.
Yes, it’s another huge sale of patents to an already huge IP behemoth. Microsoft is buying 800 of AOL’s 1100 or so patents for a little over $1 billion, while also taking up a license for the remainder 300 AOL patents. In addition, Microsoft is buying all the patents owned by AOL subsidiary Netscape.
“The agreement with Microsoft represents the culmination of a robust auction process for our patent portfolio,” said Tim Armstrong, AOL’s chairman and CEO in the press release, “We continue to hold a valuable patent portfolio as highlighted by the license we entered into with Microsoft. The combined sale and licensing arrangement unlocks current dollar value for our shareholders and enables AOL to continue to aggressively execute on our strategy to create long-term shareholder value.”
“This is a valuable portfolio that we have been following for years and analyzing in detail for several months,” added Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel and executive vice president of legal and corporate affairs, “AOL ran a competitive auction and by participating, Microsoft was able to achieve our two primary goals: obtaining a durable license to the full AOL portfolio and ownership of certain patents that complement our existing portfolio.”
The patents in question cover, among others, advertising, search, content generation/management, social networking, mapping, multimedia/streaming, and security. The Netscape patents are virtually all related to browser technology – obviously – and user interface stuff.
Wait a second – search? Advertising? Social networking? Mapping? Browsers? What oh what could Microsoft be wanting these patents for? What use could these possibly have for the giant from Redmond?
Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I’m going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to fucking kill Google.
Oh, right.
I can clearly see a clammy hand, clasping patents as the last breath of life, against open source.
Microsoft is known for their tactics and this is quite clearly a move in the same fashion.
So, should our society be reigned by commercial structures damaging to ourself, or should sense prevail?
Vote for.. um the guy who knew this.
Edited 2012-04-09 15:11 UTC
Well last week they open sourced the whole ASP.NET MVC framework … so your theory is utter bullshit.
They is also in the top 20 Linux contributors.
Microsoft is dying stuff is getting old.
Edited 2012-04-09 17:19 UTC
Well, in a way Microsoft is dying. Or at least the old Microsoft is dying. They are finally realizing that people are more than happy to use open source just to avoid their corporate bullshit. Also remember that Microsoft had to be called out before they donated that code to the kernel. They were originally just distributing closed drivers. In case you forget, here is the osnews.com article:
http://www.osnews.com/story/21882/Microsoft_s_Linux_Kernel_Code_Dro…
Everyone thought open source would kick MS butt but it ended up being and even more litigious and more controlling company, Apple. Apple proved that a few people good at making decisions can make a better product than committee.
A lot of really smart people had ideas about what Linux needed to do to beat Microsoft and being smart didn’t stop them from being wrong. Hedging my position in these battles and watching them unfold I have learned some important lessons. One of which has been to have more faith in myself and be more willing to to politely discard the opinion/advice of others.
And Apple is a open source company? How? Just because they have WebKit? Yeah right. They haven’t contributed anything to open source.
Apple is a controlling company. Period.
The war between open source and Microsoft is not over yet. The fact that you see Microsoft contributing to Linux shows that open source is winning. Open source is now too strong that they can’t avoid it anymore. Therefore is our way or the highway.
Stop spreading FUD.
Edited 2012-04-10 14:49 UTC
Priest is not saying that Apple is an open source company. The comment is saying that people thought linux and open source would be the end of Microsoft, but it actually turned out that it took a company that is even more controlling than Microsoft is (ie Apple) to cause Microsoft some pain.
Oh really? and how exactly Apple “hurt” Microsoft?
It is but maybe not in the desktop space.
Only 800 or so patents. I’d have thought AOL would have a lot more than that.
Does it seem like that antitrust suits against MS back in the day just proved a means for Microsoft to learn who to pay graft too?
You get the feeling that MS owns just about everything in the CS world in some fashion or another.
Microsoft’s philosophy: If you can’t beat them, buy them, therefore eliminating the competition…….
OMG! Microsoft is teh ebilz! THEY ARE THE ENEMIES OF OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE!!ONEONEONE!
When MS buy patents one can be sure they’ll use it for sinister things, or will just resell them to other shadowy trolls. It’s like a drugs or weapons black market. It’s a real shame that they got Netscape’s patents though.
Edited 2012-04-09 17:39 UTC
Because how Microsoft does business is actually like “Lord of War” starring Nicholas Cage …
😐
You know actually crime syndicates do horrible things. Like the Camorra,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camorra
Other than killing each other, civilians, ripping off local businesses … they also dump waste on the streets as well as chemical waste that is killing off crops in Italy.
When Microsoft starts this sort of stuff … I would support your point of view they are a criminal organisation.
Yeah, some people forget that there are more important problems in the world than caring about IBMs, Microsofts, Googles and Apples.
Yeah, and MS isn’t evil either. Calling MS evil just devalues the meaning of the word.
On the scale of evilness MS ranks pretty far down. There are many companies and organizations/groups/whatever that have done, and continues to do, far worse things than MS.
That said, it’s not like they’re altar boys either. White collar crime is still a crime.
/facepalm
As simple as that. Patents were an exception from a free market to help an inventor, nobody else.
Turing patents into a obtainable good is an aberration of that notion.
Microsoft as we know it is slowly dyeing as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is getting increasingly common.
In the future we can stream heavy apps through a browser, no need to deploy msi files or crap to clients, and no need to use windows. All will work, as long as you got a browser.
I’m really enjoying the thought of this, and I wish MS worst luck. But its a big beast, and will make a livin hell for all while it dies.
Use linux and open source and make the world a better place