ESP Wiki is looking for moderators and active contributors!

Microsoft

Revision as of 19:51, 15 March 2010 by Ciaran (talk | contribs) (Reverted edits by 140.211.15.30 (Talk) to last revision by Ciaran)

Microsoft is a strong advocate of software patents.

A perfect example of success without patents

By 1987, Microsoft had a revenue of $350 million and had only one patent. By 1990, they still had only 5 patents and their revenue was $1.2 billion.[1] Data compiled with help from Dan Bricklin.[2] This makes them proof that making a very profitable software company does not require patents.

In February 2009, Microsoft announced it had received it's 10,000th patent.[3] Given that they developed Windows95 and achieved a dominant position in the operating systems market with 77 patents or less, and they afterwards invested massively in patents and have held their dominant position, one could deduce that patents are not necessary for competing against others but are useful for entrenching an current position and preventing others from competing.

Microsoft's patent infringements

Red alert.png Section need checking: The accuracy of this section should be checked. Discussion of the possible problems can be found on the talk page in the section Talk:Microsoft#Jury verdicts, final decisions, and appeals

Uniloc (388) + i4i (>290) + z4 (66.5?) + Burst (60) + InterTrust (144) + Stac (120) = $1068,5 million, or just over a billion dollars, and that's not counting the undisclosed sums of the Eolas, Visto, or CSIRO cases.

Pending accusations

Microsoft's unsubstantiated accusations

Microsoft's claims[6] there are 235 patents infringed by the GNU/Linux operating system as a whole. These break down as:

  • the kernel Linux: 42
  • graphical user interfaces: 65
  • Open Office: 45
  • E-mail programs: 15
  • Other: 68

Microsoft's patent promises

These are ostensibly legally binding statements that allow the unlicensed use of certain technologies which may or may not be covered by Microsoft-owned patents.

According to Microsoft the Community Promise is more demanding than the OSP, for example it only applies if you implement the covered standards correctly.

If you get involved in a patent infringement suit against Microsoft, then the promises no longer apply to you and you may find yourself counter-sued for infringement of MS patents purported to apply to the covered standards. This might happen for example if you or an associate believe that Microsoft have infringed one of your patents. Thus Microsoft appear to open up a handful of their patents to you, on condition that that you effectively open all of yours to them.

In 2009, Microsoft extended the CP to include C# and mono. The Free Software Foundation have issued a statement warning against what they see as Microsoft's Empty Promise

Lobbying and amicus briefs

Microsoft were one of the main lobbyists for software patents in the EU software patents directive. They lobbied both directly[7] and by funding (non-transparently) "sock puppet" campaigns such as Campaign4Creativity.

In the 2008 in re Bilski case in the USA, Microsoft submitted a joint amicus brief with Dell.[1]

In the follow-on 2009 Bilski v. Kappos case, Microsoft submitted a joint brief with Philips and Symantec.[2]

In September 2009, Microsoft submitted a letter for the Australian government's patent consultation.

Microsoft's victims

Software Freedom Law Center estimates that, since Microsoft has had to pay more than $4 billion due to patent suits, the users have ended up paying $20 per copy of Microsoft's Windows operating system.[3] So even when Microsoft is the target, the consumer ends up being the victim.

Gates' 1991 memo

The following is from a memo which Bill Gates sent the the upper-management in Microsoft on May 16th, 1991. This memo was made public during a court case.[8]

"Patents: If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. I feel certain that some large company will patent some obvious thing related to interface, object orientation, algorithm, application extension or other crucial technique. If we assume this company has no need of any of our patents then they have a 17-year right to take as much of our profits as they want. The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can. Amazingly we haven't done any patent exchanges that I am aware of. Amazingly we haven't found a way to use our licensing position to avoid having our own customers cause patent problems for us. I know these aren't simple problems but they deserve more effort by both Legal and other groups. For example we need to do a patent exchange with HP as part of our new relationship. In many application categories straightforward thinking ahead allows you to come up with patentable ideas. A recent paper from the League for Programming Freedom (available from the Legal department) explains some problems with the way patents are applied to software."

Given the date, the League for Programming Freedom document he references is probably this one: Against Software Patents

Related pages on ESP Wiki

External links

Patently-o coverage

References