Over the past couple of decades Microsoft have, through fair means or foul taken over the vast majority of the desktop computer business. This business however is no longer subject to the stellar growth rates of the past and Microsoft now need to find a new way to keep their profits up.
Editorial Notice: All opinions are those of the author and not necessarily those of osnews.com
Microsoft have known market saturation was coming so been been trying to diversify into other areas for some time now. A strategy which when they move away from their core business, has to date been marked by an almost complete lack of success.
An example of this is the Xbox, it may be a nice console but has never managed anything better than joint second place with Nintendo’s GameCube [Consoles] and every unit sold loses money, from a business point of view the Xbox is nothing short of a disaster.
Microsoft have had success in other areas however, it may have taken a long time but Microsoft are now the leading PDA OS by revenue. Unfortunately for them this is a now shrinking market with SmartPhones now taking over, stand alone PDAs are rapidly becoming pointless. The SmartPhone OS business is dominated by Symbian who already have 80% of the market.
Microsoft need a new way to make money and I think they’ve found one, one in which market share is irrelevant.
In “The Future of Computing” [Future] I suggested a way by which Microsoft could use the Xbox2 to muscle their way into owning the hardware market. The theory is admittedly a bit far fetched (I don’t do close fetched!) but for a new business Microsoft don’t need to do anything so dramatic or risky, all they need to do is what they’ve always done – copy someone else.
Consider the Mono project (an opensource .net clone). It’s always been obvious to me Microsoft will wait until it’s in wide use then start collecting money from the companies which use it. What’s more, it’s not only a source of income but one in which they’ve let the open source community do their work for them.
Now think of that same strategy using patents, but vastly expanded. It’s IBM’s idea of monetisation of patents they are copying, to the point of even hiring Marshall Phelps who implemented the idea at IBM.
Microsoft are applying for vast numbers of software patents, a process you can be sure is very expensive. You can also be sure there’s going to be payback and if there’s one thing Microsoft excels in it’s making money. I fully expect Microsoft will use these patents to their full extent.
Microsoft expect to apply for 3000 patents in 2004 alone, evidently there’s more to come:
“We’re at an early state on that but it is something that we are pretty excited (about),” – Bill Gates on the Microsoft patenting program.
With the US patent office apparently happy to allow often overly broad patents on seemingly everything it’ll be possible to get patents on everything. Microsoft will then be able to target anyone they want.
You may think you could fight a demand for money in court by challenging the patents, indeed 50% of patents challenged are overturned. Unfortunately IBM rather cleverly got around this by suing for infringement of many patents simultaneously. Even if many of the patents are seemingly invalid the cost of fighting them in court becomes prohibitive and companies just end up paying. I fully expect Microsoft will use this tactic to their fullest advantage, but they’ll probably want the free use of your patents (at no charge of course) as well.
Microsoft no longer need a monopoly, they have a new business: Taxation.
But this wont make them the billions they are used to if they do it IBM style. Microsoft need to be a lot more aggressive, to make billions they need to do nothing short of taxing the entire IT industry and you can bet they’ll get away with it.
It doesn’t matter if you are running Linux, it doesn’t matter which license you release your code under either, if it’s used commercially and it infringes a patent, fees will still be demanded, you still pay.
This wont just be operating systems or office applications either – it will apply to anything which uses software and these days everything uses software. If anything sells which uses software, Microsoft are going to want a piece of the action.
MS don’t need to be a success in the mobile phone area, you don’t need a Set-Top-Box with MS software, they’ll get paid irrespective.
Where SCO have failed, Microsoft will win. By the time the politicians get around to doing anything about it it’ll be years to late.
So, what’s wrong with Patents?
Patents are meant to give an inventor a short term (20 year) monopoly on their idea so they can get a reward for it, patents are supposed to be very specific and non-obvious to a practitioner of the relevant field, they are also meant to be new, describing something which has never been in use before.
I’m not opposed to patents as such but it’s clear the system has broken down with the sheer volume and type of patents now being awarded (at least in the US but their problems are not unique). Additionally the 20 year limit is much too long for a fast developing industry such as technology.
Patents no longer deliver that what they were intended to, the failing system means patents can and are being abused. Microsoft know this, they also know defending yourself in court is a time consuming and hugely expensive business, their tax will be based on these two facts.
Those who have been arguing against software patents are right, if Europe implements software patents they will of handed their entire industry on a plate [MS EU Patents] to a foreign corporation – just like Japan, Australia and other parts of the world have already done, like good sheep.
Can anything be done about this?
Getting the European parliament to reintroduce the amendments for the software patents bill’s second reading would be a start, it’s somewhat non-democratic for them to have been removed in the way they were. If decisions by the people’s representatives can be so easily overridden what is the point of having a European parliament?
In the US and elsewhere fighting the useless or invalid patents needs to be done to remove their bite, there is plenty of prior art and it needs to be put on line in a central repository organised by subject and the relevant patents it can be used against. Much of our “modern” technology was invented or at least thought of decades ago, if these ideas and descriptions of implementations can be brought together in a searchable manner lawyers have a means by which to defend companies.
Fight Microsoft at their own game
More can be done than just defending, the defence could be a lot more aggressive, as the saying goes: “attack is the best form of defence”.
Companies with patents need to apply for more so there is something to fight back with, also they can be assigned to second companies so cross license agreements don’t apply to them (Intel and HP have done this to prevent the Itanium CPU being cloned).
If a main company gets sued and looks like losing, the secondary company can sue back and because they don’t actually produce anything they can only make a profit. Individuals may also have patents, individually they may not be of any great use but combined into groups they can be strong.
If Microsoft tries to Tax the industry the industry needs to Tax Microsoft right back, tie them up in legal cases and royalty payments.
Patent reforms
What really needs to happen is the patent system needs to be reformed so it provides the service it was intended to. Getting patents should be harder, invalidating bad ones should be easier.
Until the system is reformed the abuse will continue, unscrupulous companies will be able to demand royalties where they are not deserved.
It appears this process may already be starting even in the US but as with anything political initial actions will be ill thought out and real reform takes years, while politicians like to talk about reform they don’t like to do it, especially if it costs money.
Conclusion
I should point out I do not disagree with the concept of owning ideas or making money from them via royalty payments, that is after all how a chunk of the industry already works and how musicians get there living. However it is abusing this process which I strongly disagree with and it looks like Microsoft intend to do this, it’s not as if they care, they are after all a convicted monopolist on two continents.
Microsoft have yet again outsmarted their opponents, again they will just sit back and watch the billions pour in.
References
[Future] (see middle of page).
© Nicholas Blachford, August 2004
About the Author:
Nicholas Blachford lives in Paris. He is currently not working but for something to do is designing a GUI for advanced consumer entertainment systems.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
>Getting the European parliament to reintroduce the amendments >for the software patents bill’s second reading would be a >start, it’s somewhat non-democratic for them to have been
>removed in the way they were. If decisions by the people’s
>representatives can be so easily overridden what is the point
>of having a European parliament?
you hit the nail on the head with this one…
christian
Come on man, cut the guy some slack, he has a few valid points there, and it’s not like we didn’t read anything like that before. Fact is that a lot of articles have been speculating on this subject for a while…
Comments on the article…well, not very consistent, as it jumps from one thing to another, from US patents to EU patent legislation, among other things. The grammar should be checked too.
BTW, hasn’t anybody heard of the FAT patent and that MS wants royalties from anyone that is using FAT? Including PDAs, digital cameras, etc..
You can only sell products to 100% of the population. After that your kind of done.
(Unless you license your customers which will only end in a mass revolution).
The article is rather about software patents than about Microsoft. Microsoft abusing the software patent system whereas small(er) groups aren’t able to profit from the system is merely an indication of a flawed system.
An example of this is the Xbox, it may be a nice console but has never managed anything better than joint second place with Nintendo’s GameCube [Consoles] and every unit sold loses money, from a business point of view the Xbox is nothing short of a disaster.
Who said the point of the XBox was to raise profit in the short term?
You failed to notice in your article how Microsoft ain’t a pure software company anymore right now. They’ve started all kind of initiatives: XBox, MSN.
Such could be an indication they’re drifting away from their OS/Office cash cow, or that they’re setting up a ‘backup’ plan. Their conservative way of handling the money they got at stock is also an indication of this. Imagine they’d use a lil’ of that money to improve MSIE (e.g. CSS, security)?
“We’re at an early state on that but it is something that we are pretty excited (about),” – Bill Gates on the Microsoft patenting program.
Yep. Read about it. Read the article where one key IBM executive moved to Microsoft and talked about how Microsoft could use patents in a more effective way for their own gain. Unfortunately i’m not able to find the article.
I’ve also read articles from one Microsoftie who’s researching how “open sourcing” could benefit Microsoft. Note, benefit Microsoft reads as benefits Windows to me, right now at least. Reference: http://blogs.msdn.com/jledgard/archive/2004/08/20/217992.aspx
The GPL was written by Eben Moglen somewhere in the 80’s. What specific part of the GPL is to be patented? Is it even possible to patent a license technique?
Also, consider:
1) Just because a patent exists does not mean it ain’t valid.
2) Just because a patent exists doesn’t mean (all) users of the implementation will have to pay royalties.
3) Microsoft did not “patent Sudo”. They patented some technique similar as one in use by Sudo. It matters what it exactly is! (Just because Slashdot says “Microsoft patents Sudo” doesn’t mean you should copy that ignorant headline. Slashdot is extremely good at writing such headlines when it comes down to Microsoft and patents so be sure to actually read the article they’re referring to and/or some of the more informed comments.)
IMO you do have a point regarding new licenses. Some licenses are written by techies; not by lawyers. Because if this, the chances of legal problems are much higher than with BSD license or GPL.
hi,
i have a question. what is a small time developer going to do. those who make small applications and stuff and sell them for living. they dont have the money to check whether the software clashes with any patents. let say i design & code a small firewall application or a sound player – how do i know that whether i crossed any patents.
this is really sad.
cya.
Great concept for an article, and I was quite interested in some bits of the article, but overall a bit disappointing.
Thing is, MS have hit market saturation in the OS market. On the back of that, they also have saturation in the office prodcuctivity software (think Word and Excel…). So diversification is important, and as you said they failed in most of their plans…
But, it should not surprise us that they are making some headway in other OS markets: It’s what they do best – their “core competency”.
The Xbox, I think, will get much better in the future because one thing they can use to differentiate it from the others is the OS. MS has always taken care of its developers (their development tools are some of the best, but perhaps not the API
). So if they make the Xbox the easiest console to code for, they’ll have a winner. On top of that, if they make it similar enough to Windows programming, then they leverage all of those coders out there.
And re converging mobile devices: that’s something they can capitalise on. Because not only will they need a good enough OS, but also, they can integrate into the desktop (Windows). As evil and anti-competitive as this sounds, it actually is a good business strategy and a great product if they get it to work!
Just MHO.
Just because a patent exists does not mean it ain’t valid.
Just because it’s invalid doesn’t mean that it isn’t cheaper for each individual company to pay than to fight.
Just because a patent exists doesn’t mean (all) users of the implementation will have to pay royalties.
They don’t want all users, just the ones that they can get most money out of. If a person is too small then it will cost more to sue them than they are likely to get out of it. Perhaps we should think of this less of a Tax than a legal mugging.
The thug (Microsoft, or any corporation with lots of IP) spots the richest looking guy on the street(one of their competitors, probably a smaller one), hits them over the head (sues them for breach of patent citing stupid amount of damages), and grabs as much stuff as he can get (out of court settlement for money and licences to more IP) whilst not getting caught (having the patent invalidated).
The current state of Patent law is just stupid, patents have been granted for Basmatti rice, buttons that do more than one thing depending on how long you hold them. My dad was told recently that a surgical precedure that he created was covered by a patent (which had been issued relating to treating something completly different). Patents arn’t bad in themselves, but the way that they are currently being issued, particually in the States, is.
If 50% of patents challenged are overturned, it clearly mean that the US patent office is doing a poor job, and they should be liable for that.
If companies start to sue the patent office for the time and money lost in court, they will certainly think it twice before granting a patent.
Well that was just an idea, it may not be possible, but I would love to see it.
Maybe the patent law should be revised.If someone violates it
it is right to take legal actions period.It’s everyones own
responsibility to do some research before using some peace of code.I’m a happy SuSE Linux user by the way.
Extend and Embrace
I strongly have to disagree. There a zillions of patents. Many of them protect some triviality. So if you want to release an application you would need a patent lawyer to check your code, if you still want to have time to write some code.
Many software-patents proctect things so commen in the industrie, that no one would even imagine that it is protected.
@Jophn Deo: I see you live in the Nederlands. Well patents in Europe aren’t yet such a big problem like in the USA. But if the EU agrees to the new patent law hell will break lose…
I fully expect ip abuse to become the predominant form of revenue for most businesses.
Maybe one of you can clarify this for me: I am under the impression that it would be legal for one linux vendor (like Novel for instance) to obtain a patent for something specific to their os and then sue a rival flavor of linux if they tried to use the same ideas in their own distro without their source code. So far as I’m aware of, the gpl covers only the source code, not the ideas covered by it. This could create a complete nightmare for distro makers. Is this the case?
Ibm said something about using its patents to protect itself from linux should it feel threatened, giving me the feeling they might start doing this
@Nolrider
Interesting.I hope this contra-productive behaviour will not
be inhaled here to much.The EU is one big facade.There are
far to many lobyists.And not enough countries realize how big
the impact finally will be of the EU policies being made right
now.I hope not that the new patent law gets through.Will stall
some progress.
Wow, another “We already have Java” Mono basher.
I don’t recollect saying anything about the quality or usefulness of Mono, or if it should (or should not) exist.
If anything, the fact there is now competition means both Java and Mono will force each other to improve.
—
i have a question. what is a small time developer going to do. those who make small applications and stuff and sell them for living. they dont have the money to check whether the software clashes with any patents. let say i design & code a small firewall application or a sound player – how do i know that whether i crossed any patents
As amon ra said I don’t think they’re going to care about small developers unless you’re making pots of money.
—
If companies start to sue the patent office for the time and money lost in court, they will certainly think it twice before granting a patent.
That is a very good point, that would turn things on their head.
I agree with the first poster — the author hit the nail on the head on all counts.
What will happen in the end depends on public backlash. That is: little-guy software co’s get sued by big-guys with patents, stories show up on local news, maybe people take notice. If enough people take notice, maybe we’ll win.
Sometimes things have to get really bad before enough people take notice to fix it.
Actually, that brings up a good strategy: to keep pushing, keep making Free software better and better (more user-friendly), and force MS’s hand. They’ll want to litigate a little here and there, but not all at once otherwise too many folks might take notice and make a stink.
Monopolies don’t worry about profit — they’ve already got *that*. Instead, they worry about the public’s perception of them, since they *can* possibly become a target of gov’t action.
If a Free software desktop was to become user friendly to the masses, MS’s profits in that sector would likely dip dramatically — then the patent lawsuits would *really* start flying, start making the evening news regularly, and your average citizen might even start to take notice. *That* is when we might start to see some reforms.
IMO.
🙂
I got scared really. It’s too sad. I’m quite sure Billy doesn’t patent everything just for fun.
I like the article; it does seem a little paranoid, especially with the Mono bit, but we really do need patent reform in the US.
Nevertheless, the following strikes me as disingenuous:
…every unit sold loses money, from a business point of view the Xbox is a disaster
My understanding (possibly wrong) is that every game unit sold loses money: both the PS2 and the GC are also moneylosers. Profits are made in the fees that developers pay.
Is this wrong?
I think, you forgot to mention content.
Microsoft (or Bill Gates) already owns one of the worlds largest photo collection. Think additionally about the upcoming dominance of the WMV codec.
There’s too much stuff going wrong with a monopoly like this.
“My understanding (possibly wrong) is that every game unit sold loses money: both the PS2 and the GC are also moneylosers. Profits are made in the fees that developers pay. ”
i thought that out of those only the GC makes any profit on the actual unit all profits come from licencing fees and publishing fees well thats what i thought. if anyone actually knows please post it.
i’m patenting this idea that if you have a crap OS that dies for no reason it should come up with a blue screen with white-ish text with all this debug info that basically means nothing to the user and causes them hours of frustration.
Maybe i could market it as a support solution?
cheers
peter
Every XBOX unit loses money but Microsof tmakes up for this loss in licensing to game developers and publishers. All game consoles are like this, it’s not something endemic of the way Microsoft handles its XBOX unit. XBOX Live is also another area where Microsoft makes a fair amount of money off the XBOX as well as differentiating their console from the others (even the PS2 modem).
“Mono” is not likely to ever make money, basically, because no developer with even one-tenth of a cranium would touch “.net” or C-sharp with a ten foot pole. Why hand MSFT ANOTHER potential monopoly, when you can use Java and only have to do the job once; do it once and all platforms will be “done” from day one?
I’d rate the article “informative”, but there’s several points I disagree with:
“Microsoft are applying for vast numbers of software patents, a process you can be sure is very expensive. You can also be sure there’s going to be payback”
If getting a patent costs you money, that’s an investment. The writer assumes that investment is returned by ‘taxes’. Need not be: if another company wants to collect from you, a patent in your pocket can also return that investment by saving you legal costs, or having to pay up. Here, I don’t think so bad of large companies like Microsoft or IBM, they don’t get much of their profits from slapping patents at other parties. IP-only companies without real products (like SCO these days), are much worse in this respect. Second, it’s not “get a patent, and collect”. Turning a patent into real profit is not so easy, and if someone decides to fight a worthless patent, trying to enforce it anyway could end up costing you megabucks. VFAT or “Sudo” patents are good examples. Used everywhere, but you explain to me how M$ could possibly make a net profit from those.
It’s well known that M$’s cash cows are Windows and Office, and everything else doesn’t do so well. That tells me they’re good at making money from Windows and Office, and others are better in making money from game consoles or cellphones. If M$ is about money and they’re smart, they should just stick to those cash cows.
“It doesn’t matter (..) if it’s used commercially and it infringes a patent, fees will still be demanded, you still pay.”
Bullshit. Even if a full Linux distro together would infringe on thousands of patents (many trivial & worthless, some valid?), you can still run it in a large company, and pay nothing. As above: patents would have to be located, enforced, maybe stand up in court, before there’s even a chance of payment for anything. Also, it would be hard to force for example Red Hat to pay for using some patent: they distribute Linux distro’s, they make money from services that go with it, but they wouldn’t be doing any patent infringement with that. Their users maybe, and to collect from a patent, you’d have to sue those users, like SCO is doing with copyright claims. (note: patents AREN’T copyrights!)
…20 years is much too long…
Totally agree. A patent should essentially enable you to recoup the investment you made in creating what you patented. Created something brilliant, and 5 years later, still haven’t been able to make money from it? Okay, you had your chance, let the rest of the world have a shot at it now.
“If decisions by the people’s representatives can be so easily overridden what is the point of having a European parliament?”
Laws derive their strength from how reasonable they are, and how fairly they were created. If a couple of people behind closed doors put aside the will of the European parliament, any law derived from that will lose its strength, will be largely ignored, and hard to enforce. Personally, I don’t feel bound by laws that I had no influence or say in. Proper law should describe, not define, what is “wrong”, and dub that “illegal”. Not the other way round. It is stupid though how much taxpayers’ money is wasted with this kind of decision-making.
“…I do not disagree with the concept of owning ideas…”
I do, and it’s a principle divide between people. If a musician devotes years to produce a totally unique sound, I think it’s only reasonable to reward him/her for the effort. But despite that, I feel the musician doesn’t own the sound, he/she only discovered how to produce it. That’s a very significant difference. It’s like laws of nature. Einstein didn’t own “E=mc^2”, that law was always there. He only discovered its existence, like Columbus was one of the first Europeans to discover America, and plant his flag there. Does that automatically make a whole continent his? I don’t think so. The musician should be rewarded for producing the sound, not for allowing use of it.
@small developer:
Research has been done on this. Conclusion: if you’re writing software, ignore patents. That is cheaper either way, even if you are dragged to court.
dmd writes: “I fully expect ip abuse to become the predominant form of revenue for most businesses.”
I’m not so pessimistic, but note: if a company spends 10% on legal affairs, in fighting patent claims or getting profit from them, that 10% is not spent on advancing the state of the art. So research & development is replaced with lawyers. That 10% is a loss for society as a whole, including you and me.
If you can’t beat them, make them irrelevant.
poor richard wrote:
Why hand MSFT ANOTHER potential monopoly, when you can use Java and only have to do the job once; do it once and all platforms will be “done” from day one?
Why hand it to Sun when you can use C++?
They could make a secure os.
Collective nouns are treated differently in Britain and the US. British usage is just as proper as US usage in an international forum such as OSNews.
In Britain, a company name refers to the people who make up the company, and is therefore a collective noun. In the US, a company name refers to a fictious person, and is singular.
Or Python, or Perl, or you could build your own intermediary libraries and do it in c or c++ and be very careful to watch portability as you go.
Personally, I don’t feel bound by laws that I had no influence or say in.
See you’re from Holland: So, you sit in the Dutch parliament?
You don’t feel bound by laws that were passed one or two years before you were born?
😉
As has already been pointed out, some people have noticed what appears to be bad grammar on my part.
I can say:
Microsoft is
Microsoft are
Both are valid in British English as Microsoft can be seen as a single entity or an an entitiy made up of individuals.
However I can now understand why it’s being pointed out – it must stand out like a sore thumb to American-English speakers!
stop using plural verbs when talking about a single entity, even if it is a corporation. it is still a single entity and not proper to use plurals when refering to it.
OS News need to make sure that this standard is kept.(see it sounds wrong)
I found this article a little too naive. Specifically, the assumption that just because someone has a patent will mean they will make money from it. One will not make huge amounts of money from a patent (remember QCOM?) until it will be tested in the court of law. That will be the real test of a patent validity and the scope of the patent. Considering the largely open source nature of linux etc. operating systems, it would be possible to come up with precise refutation of specific claims of a patent. One can establish the prior state of art much more easily for the open source products.
If Microsoft will seriously go on the path of taxation (as the article refers to it) – it would just give significant boost to migration to open source software. And, such taxation is really hard to enforce in China, India and third word countries. Heck, they can’t even enforce to get money for their own products.
The cumulative effect of this will be that open source solutions will get more and more acceptance – which in turn will force hardware/software vendors to support them thoroughly – which in turn will make it easier for more people to move to open source solutions.
This may be just the adverse effect that will make microsoft seriously think before going the route of imposing taxation.
Osho
Sentence: If M$ (the company) is about money and they (the people working for M$) are smart, …
It is valid English, and the meaning of each word is clear. So what is the problem? From what I read, some English speaking people don’t like one word to be used for “the company” and “the people working for the company” in the same sentence? Thanks for pointing that out.
@Jack Perry:
No I’m not a politician, and don’t work in the software business either. I don’t like politics, it’s like operating systems: serves a purpose, some good, some bad, nothing perfect.
You don’t feel bound by laws that were passed one or two years before you were born?
Examples: 1) You shall not kill anyone, 2) You should not steal an icecream from a kid, 3) You should not drive through a red traffic light.
I try to follow all 3 examples. Why? Because they make sense, everybody feels it’s the right thing to do, it would become a mess if everyone would ignore the above, if you would ask me right now, I would say: “keep those laws”, and democratic chosen politicians in my country CAN, but don’t change those laws NOW. Law books only serve to write this down. It has to be that way for laws to work.
There is a petition on the web with currently 356775 (!, the counter still runs) people saying: “software patents are bad”. It’s not the only petition on the web, and I have not seen 1 supporting the contrary. Software is everywhere, I voted in European elections, EP says ‘NO’ to software patents, and some ‘wise men’ say ‘YES’? Then &#@*% them, and ignore those laws.
So, lets create a WikiPriorArt.org and make it possible for everybody to submit their idea’s and “prior art”?
I can provide a hosting-location. But I am guessing that some trusted organisation would want to do this?
If Microsoft tries to enforce their patents then software development will leave the “software patent countries” and move into what I know call the “free world”. But this is already happening and Microsoft has not done it, it is happening because of the education system that the British empire left as a legacy to the Indians. Just as the USA before left Japan with a legacy of manufacturing that led jobs to leave the USA and go to Japan. There are too many software developers that are not under the yoke of the USA patent system for patent tax to ever work.
Currently my country “Australia” is in the process of negotiating a free trade pact with The United States of America. But because a) the Americans want to have more say than we do in certain areas (sugar etc) and b) their Intellectual Property system is incompatible with our Medical system and our Software companies, this pact will most likely fall through.
Besides Microsoft has always tried other methods than patent lawsuits to win. I do not think they will change their strategy.
(Anyone theologically literate enough to care to guess why they are named the Simonides?)
On Patenting The Imponderables …
(c) Wesley Parish
I went to see the Simonides at my editor’s request. “You’re Catholic, you should be able to understand these people,” she said. “They claim to have patented the Eucharist.”
I eventually found them in a caravan park in Dubbo. I don’t know why it took me so long ? Dubbo’s where everything turns up that doesn’t wind up in either Coober Pedy or Kalgoorlie.
They hadn’t been there long, but people knew them already ? enough to point me in their direction. I’m not paranoid, but I would be if I was them. I knocked on their caravan door.
“And how may we help you?” the petite brunette ? Mr Simonides ? asked. His wife looked down at me over his shoulder, and said, “Just invite him in, pet.”
“People rang, told us about a journo on the loose, said we should expect you here,” she said as I sat down.
“So you’ve taken out patents on the Mass, I hear?”
“Who told you that?” He wasn’t angry, just exasperated. “You’ve got it wrong. We’ve patented Transubstantiation.”
“Oh my God! When the priest transforms the bread and wine ? ”
” ? into Christ’s body and blood. You’ve remembered your catechism. And it is a bona fide business method ? restoring the participant to a state of grace so one can think and act rationally…”
His wife fussed about the kitchen, preparing smoko, muttering under her breath. If I remembered rightly, she had been a professional wrestler before becoming a monk, then blaming God publicly for being born in the wrong sex and disappearing from public view after her sex change. Mr Simonides had been a nun, but the details were considerably more hush-hush.
“You’ve got American, Australian and European patents already, I see.”
She laughed, glancing over her shoulder. “America was easy. All they wanted to see was our money. Not so easy in Europe and Aussie…”
“Asia’s tougher,” he added. “They don’t understand like we do, the importance of…”
“But why?” I interrupted.
“God owes us, the Church owes us, and we think we deserve some return on God’s big mistakes.”
She turned around and laid some food on the table. Both held their breath until I had finished. Earl Grey is not a mere courtesy detail ? it’s the very lifeblood of it, I find.
They smiled at each other, relieved.
“You found the food and drink satisfactory?”
I smiled and nodded.
“Because we have patented Transubstantiation, we are now able to extend its benefits to other foodstuffs. You have eaten Christ’s body and drunk his blood. You are now in a state of grace.”
I leapt from the chair in panic. I dropped the teacup, heard it shatter. “I haven’t been confessed for over a decade!”
I opened the door, charged out, remembering at the last moment to throw some loose change on the table. They frowned. “We prefer Visa.”
I frantically crossed myself all the way home, cursing my stupidity. Now would be the time to use that Rosary my oldest sisters had forced upon me so many years ago. I wouldn’t have much time for the write-up on the two crazies, that was for certain!
The END