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Antitrust law

Red alert.png What this entry documents is not a solution.
This practice may be ineffective or useless in the long term.
ESP's position is that abolition of software patents is the only solution.


History has shown that antitrust law and other laws to protect competition don't work against problems caused by patents.

In the EU case against Microsoft, which Microsoft lost, the final settlement allows Microsoft to use its software patents against all commercial software projects, including commercial projects that develop free software.[1]

The US case is less clear. It involves hardware manufacturers, so the existence of patent royalties isn't a crunch issue (unlike software where it breaks common software distribution models). The case in question is the Federal Trade Commission's case against Rambus provides a complicated example, without much good news. (This is well described on Wikipedia: Rambus#Lawsuits

In the European Union, this is being tested again in the case IBM and TurboHercules, 2010.

Related pages on ESP Wiki

External links

Microsoft

Examples involving Microsoft:

References