Bill Gates wants more credit for Microsoft’s inventions. The Microsoft chairman said on Thursday that the company expects to file 3,000 patent applications this year, up from a little over 2,000 last year and 1,000 just a few years ago. Update: Microsoft may already dominate several key markets, but the company says there’s still plenty of room for growth.
Gates Wants Patent Power
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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That’s why Microsoft as we know it today should disapear or divided, otherwise, everyone will pay royalties to Bill everytime he pushes the power button of a computer.
The thing is that Bill is patenting other’s invention, for example “the virtual desktop manager”, “the ability for human body to transmit electricity and therefore computer data” and so much more.
MS invent something….
When
what decade was it..
Have i missed something
most of what computers will ever need to use. http://home.att.net/~jbcole/humor/Microsoft_patents.htm Originally from theonion.com:
I seriously feel the US patent system is flawed. When one company can file 3000 patents in one year, all in the name of Monopoly, there’s something not quite right.
Really, it does.
is that the ‘innovative’ software they’ve been claiming all these years?
it was the late 70s or early 80s. it was called microsoft basic and it was good….. now all the stuff if not too good
Somebody posted this in an Ars forum recently, and I think it sums up the “software patents” situation quite nicely. It’s a letter from Donald Knuth to the US Patent Office:
http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/knuth-to-pto.txt
Not only the american patent system really fucking sucks, but they try *with some success* to force european countries to adopt the same system.
Quote:
“Basic, ”
Nope, Visual Basic, yeah, basic in general, no.
Quote:
“the personal computer,”
No, they did help make it easier for home users to use a computer though, but they sure did not invent the personal computer.
Quote:
“the graphical user interface, etc..”
MS did not invent the graphical user interface.
Please, use a search engine to actually look some things up, thanks.
if the u.s. patenting system is not fixed economic growth will be hampered and personal freedom threatened. is something concrete beeing done about this or for how long is this going to continue?
by the way, does anybody know what happened to the proposed new eu software patenting laws?
A person who worked previously at IBM and currently at Microsoft in high position said when he started working for Microsoft he found out Microsoft doesn’t make good use of its patent portfolio. Therefore he wanted to change the strategy: instead of defense patents he wanted to allow others to license the patent implementation and 2 he wanted to file more patents. I can’t find the source of this, it was a recent article. I’m searching though. With that in mind, this article isn’t really news to me.
All these things started while Clinton was in office. But yes Microsoft does have alot of republicans in its pockets beause its a BIG business, I’m sure there are a few democrats in there too though.
I will patent the “concept” , can we find anything else to patent that is not included in the concept?
Let’s play some sofistic games around patents and shit&crap politics
Actually, I think MS “invented” something with the NewShell, as it was called – the shell for Windows 95, that was later adopted by NT4, and in the meantime had an unsupported (but much used) implementation for NT 3.51. OK, it was back in 1994 (almost exactly a decade ago), and it only affected GUI shell usability for the user, but it still was radical enough to almost be called “invention” – even if it only was more of a “the next logical step, to get rid of that horrible Program Manager”.
But IMO that’s when it all started to go. Microsoft had actually made usability studies up til then, and NewShell was IMNSHO very good. That Win98 and NT5+ completely destroyed it by “integrating” web-junk and Goat-knows-what is another (sad) story.
Obviously, at least for anyone with at least half a brain (what’s that, 2-5% of the population?), the USPT is so fscked up that it seems it’s intent on destroying not only US developers lives, but destroying even the *world*. With its standards, you could patent Tetris. As such, I predict the USA (unless the ones now “ruling” over Europe also screws up equally bad) will be quite alone in their cesspool of patents and litigation in a not too long time. I also predict that no politician will ever get the brains to see the reason(s).
Basic, the personal computer, the graphical user interface, etc..
BASIC – Yeah! Right Microsoft was around 1, May 1969?! I didn’t know that!
http://www.levenez.com/lang/history.html#05
http://wwwshs1.bham.wednet.edu/curric/socst/wa/tdhist.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_programming_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft
Personal Computers
It seems that PCs were not invented by Microsoft.
http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/comphist/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer
For Gods sake! Microsoft never was a hardware company! That’s the “soft” stands for.
Graphical Interfaces
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_GUI
Aside from Basic, which is the best language out there for any programming task, these inventions have been blatently ripped off by the likes of Apple.
There are tons of languages better in many senses than Visual Basic. But, of course, if you only know one language you have a tendency to think that it is the best language.
All these things started while Clinton was in office.
All of which things started with Clinton? The original DOJ cases were started under Clinton, including the 1995 (’96?) consent decree (which did virtually nothing, IIRC), as well as the 2000-ish case which found Microsoft to be an illegal monopoly.
However, Bush became president before the penalty phase of the last case, and it is the opinion of many that Bush requested that the DOJ not push for a Microsoft breakup (or anything else that could be considered “serious”). You must admit that this looks bad, even if Bush/Ashcroft didn’t change anything regarding the Microsoft case after coming into office.
This isn’t to say that Clinton didn’t do anything bad; after all, he did sign the DMCA into law, but that’s completely unrelated to Microsoft and patents.
And as for Patents, software was first considered generally patentable in a court case in the early 1980’s, when Reagan was in office. So it seems fair to say that Republicans are responsible for the current patent and Microsoft situation, no matter how incorrect that may actually be…
In a similar fashion to what IBM has done for decades.
Like it or not, with the US patent system the way it is MS has to take steps to defend itself from other companies. That means having enough patents to fight back with.
If they don’t they’ll find themselves sued into oblivion (Think SCO vs IBM with actual proof of patent violation).
The patent system is at fault here. You can’t really blame MS for trying to protect itself.
Yeah, Applesoft BASIC is the best and it was developed by Microsoft — NOT Apple!
Clearly some people cannot figure out that someone was yanking their chains when every historical fact is wrong.
Then again, there are probably some people who believe Microsoft invented all of that crud. I’ve certainly seen people who equate Microsoft with the personal computer, and believe that Microsoft invented BASIC.
Why don’t you stop bringing partisan politics into the situation, and just try to fix it? There are well-meaning Democrats and Republicans in government, just like there are self-serving Democrats and Republicans in government. Microsoft was a company during the Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations. You could blame any of them. Or, you could do the sensible thing and blame the patent system that lets this happen. If you seriously think that Republicans are the only party that takes bribes from companies, then you are just deceiving yourself because you want to make one party look bad.
The President has very little to do with this problem, Reagan, Clinton, or Bush. The problem, in this situation, is the fact that these patents are allowed to get through. Fix that problem, rather than trying to use this as an opportunity to demagogue the party that you disagree with.
“Basic, the personal computer, the graphical user interface, etc..”
XEROX, or even a company before that, invented the GUI.
The personal computer was invented by Apple.
Even Visual Basic is a rip-off from Apple!
Read here what happened: http://www.igeek.com/articles/History/VisualBASIC.txt
So what DID Microsoft invented? If you know, please tell her: http://nimh.org/microsoft
Nothing, afaik.
“we don’t have any, so let’s buy some innovation”
I think I’ll go and buy me a girlfriend while we’re at it.
So it seems fair to say that Republicans are responsible for the current patent and Microsoft situation, no matter how incorrect that may actually be…
How can it be “fair” to say something that is “incorrect”? Such logic boggles the mind…
There’s an article here joking about Bill Gate’s aspirations to create the Matrix with this sort of technology.
http://brainsnap.com/brainstorm/tiki-view_articles.php
You could blame any of them. Or, you could do the sensible thing and blame the patent system that lets this happen.
Or you could blame the American people for making this happen.
If you seriously think that Republicans are the only party that takes bribes from companies, then you are just deceiving yourself because you want to make one party look bad.
Nope, Democratos are corrupt just like Republicans … maybe to a slightly lesser degree, but corrupt nonetheless. The trick to getting rid of Microsoft is to elect someone into office who isn’t bought and paid for before they’re even elected. Of course, neither Bush nor Kerry fit this description, and Nader just scares the hell out of people I think
Or you could blame the American people for making this happen.
Or you could make sense when you talk. Why are you blaming Americans? This is just the type of nonsense that happens when a large bureaucracy is in control of things. Time to re-think some of the rules.
Democratos are corrupt just like Republicans … maybe to a slightly lesser degree, but corrupt nonetheless.
Neither is more or less corrupt than the other. Quit being partisan, you’re only making a fool out of yourself when you add little digs like that to an otherwise fairly insightful statement.
The point is, the PTO needs reform, because nonsense like this gets pushed through. Its no one’s fault, its the system. So the system needs to be tweaked.
For this reason there will never be a perfect OS. Anything good will be patented and therefore blocked from being used by anyone else. I believe someone should get credit where due, but this means there will never be an all round great OS.
once upon a time, patents and intellual rights protected innovators and encouraged inventions.
Today, patent rights are used by rich corporation to unjustly squash competition and innovation. They are used to protect Common knowledge from accessibility and fair use.
Its no longer about what you know or discover but rather its about how many lawyers you can pay for and for how long.
Well, that’s why there’s something called prior art. And most of those silly patents would probably be anulled by the court if someone was to get sued because they would probably have a lot more knowledge about it than what the people at the patent office has.
The reason why there won’t ever be the perfect OS is because people are different and OSs are mostly made for more that one person to use.
Or you could make sense when you talk. Why are you blaming Americans? This is just the type of nonsense that happens when a large bureaucracy is in control of things. Time to re-think some of the rules.
Well, it’s like this .. if MS is allowed to do what they do because of corrupt politicians, who exactly was it that put these politicians in office?
It’s just like the whole thing with DRM and copy-protected music … the only reasons these things are allowed to exist is because we (the American people) keep buying it.
I agree with you. Both parties are bought out (I say that as a Democrat), but Nader would throw out the baby with the bath water (he’s the “no running with scissors” candidate”). What is needed is someone who is not bought out, but is at the same time pro-business.
Even Visual Basic is a rip-off from Apple!
Read here what happened: http://www.igeek.com/articles/History/VisualBASIC.txt
Negative. The history of VB on iGeek.com is flawed and downright wrong. Anyone using the freakin’ VB language since v 1.0 knows the history as its well documented.
VB came about when someone at MS had the idea of taking a shelved GUI project by one Alan Cooper and mating it to the QuickBasic compiler.
Notice how in that igeek article there is no mention of Alan Cooper but if you load up a copy of VB v1-3 you’ll find “Portions Copyright Alan Cooper” in the about box ?
Some of us were using VB back in the day and know the real story, don’t buy the crap that iGeek has posted because its flat out wrong on the origins of VB.