Microsoft <...> would now concentrate on trying reform US law to prevent abuses of the patent system
They're kidding, right?
America's top court has rejected Microsoft's appeal against a ruling that Microsoft Word infringed on patents owned by a tiny Canadian software maker.. The US Supreme Court unanimously upheld an earlier court's ruling that said Microsoft willfully infringed on i4i's XML patents in Word 2003 and 2007. Microsoft was ordered to …
No, because patent enthusiasts always think that their own patents are like golden unicorns farting happiness and pissing magic whereas other people's patents are the worthless manure that their unicorns would never produce. Obviously, everyone making the "high quality patents only" argument thinks like this because they still want the officially sanctioned state monopoly to work in their favour.
The solution is just to get rid of patents outright and make the patent-happy do some work for their money, rather than expect everyone else to pay them for the privilege of realising (usually completely independently) whatever "nifty" ideas got sent off to the patent office.
Frivolous patents are the problem. So to reduce this patents need to be more expensive. Whilst at it other reforms should include a wholesale bulk electronic lodgement process with appropriate discounts, oh yes and guess who can come up with the software to do this. B-)
M$ (Perverting the system for the last 36 years)
"With nowhere left to go in this four-year case, Microsoft said on Thursday that it would now concentrate on trying reform US law to prevent abuses of the patent system."
Excellent now lets see you stand up and stop patenting software and use copyright protection instead.. like you should be using!
Come on Microsoft, here's your chance to do the world a favor.. stop patenting software! You don't have to patent it, that's your choice! You could easily copyright it instead as you should have been doing in the first place!
is they stop patenting their software, they will get more of these bogus cases coming up against them.
The same goes for sueing others, they have to, because they hold the patent...
They need to scrap the software patent and get rid of the freeloaders, who are ruining it for real developers.
This is a sad day for software development, at least in the USA.
I for one look forward to Steve Ballmer visiting the patent office tomorrow and asking that all Microsoft software patents be turned into copyright.
Wait, did I hear you say it's not gonna happen? But you just stated publicly that you wanted to see companies stop abusing the patent system here in the US. Oh, I see, you meant OTHER companies!
> asking that all Microsoft software patents be turned into copyright.
That doesn't make sense.
Microsoft *already* copyrights its code. Copyright exists on specific implementations, and jsut about all code currently available in any medium is copyrighted.
Patents are about preventing others from independently developing your "invention" - and I have to use quotes around that word, since most patents I've seen lately involve no such inventiveness.
There's no way that patents could be transformed into copyrights, since they cover necessarily different aspects of development. And that is one of the many reaons why software copyright should exist, but software patents shouldn't.
Vic.
Vic,
I'm not disagreeing with you. I know they copyright the software already, I was just being sarcastic. I'm not against patents because honestly if I invent something other than software I want to be able to patent it or some large company would just swoop in and steal my product and I would never be able to compete against that.. and why should my idea make an already rich company even richer without me licensing or selling the technology to them.
But to go further.
Ask a developer.. do you WRITE code or do you INVENT code? You write it of course!
In fact you can write code in many different ways and it can have the same results. However when a developer writes code he writes it for a specific OS designed to run on a specific type of computer and he then expects his patent to protect hm from all the others doing the same thing even if they are not writing in the same computer language or OS. This is why I object to software and process patents.. They pervert the patent process. Patents aren't the problem. The problem is they should never have been using patents for software in the first place! And don't even get me started on patents to protect a process!!!
Take the toaster
Patent 1 - simply because I typed this example 1st
A electrical powered device that uses heated coils and pops up when a selected electrical resistance is reached then I have a modern home toaster
Patent 2
A steel bar with a wooden handle on one end and a thin steel cage on the other, I have made a toaster that would work excellent over a camp fire.
The two devices are equally valid and do the same function just in different ways and are actually mutually exclusive since one requires the use of fire as a heating source and the other requires the use of electricity. However if this was a software or a process patent the person who made patent 1 could sue the owner of patent 2 for infringing on his invention.
They are both valid devices doing the same thing but in different ways.
Now if the patent office were to create a patent just for software and they made the rules that allowed the patent very specific then maybe I will agree to using patent protection for software..
But I would insist on the following:
What is the specific OS this software designed to run on including version number of the OS.
Since code written under MacOS and Windows or Linux would probably be different don't expect a patent you created to work under Windows to also protect you under a different OS if you didn't code for it.
Is the application web based or what, is the code portable, in which specific way?
What was the software coded in, (an application compiled in C cannot be protected if someone else can have the same desired effect if they built their's in Java or visual basic or assembly or whatever. They may be doing the same thing but they are doing it in a different way and their code is different from yours.
A copy of the code MUST be attached - Yeah I know software companies would hate this but the Patent Office could hold this back from the public to protect the person or company who created the code - this way the patent office could reject copied code. All comments would need to be removed from the submitted code and the patent office could just do a code comparison.
The software must work as described and not be something oblivious that people would do naturally without the patent in the first place (I'm thinking the Amazon OneClick patent here which really isn't a software patent but a process patent but I think you get what I mean)
I could go on, but the point I'm getting to is this is a fail on the Patent Office in the first place who without thought or consideration just made it easier on the lawyers and patent trolls to get rich and kill innovation.
"Microsoft said on Thursday that it would now concentrate on trying reform US law to prevent abuses of the patent system."???
Microsoft is doing the exact same thing to Android handset manufacturers claiming a royalty for every single handset sold.
http://www.winrumors.com/htc-pays-microsoft-5-per-android-device-generates-more-income-than-windows-phone/
Microsoft should get its two-face and hypocritical self of its high horse and stop dragging other companies through the courts abusing the very patent system that it claims to be victim of.
Hypocrisy is an ethical concept, which has no place in the business world. Not only does no one pay any attention to hypocrisy or try to avoid it, there is plentiful evidence that they cannot even see it when it is right in front of their eyes.
You cannot optimize a system for two variables at the same time. The world of business can be defined, for practical purposes, as that world in which everything is optimized to maximize the height of the pile of money acquired in unit time. Therefore, while business people may find it useful to talk about ethics, they cannot apply it without becoming very unsuccessful business people.
It is not so much the Big Corps that love the patent system. The USPTO and the patent lawyers love the system just as it is. Any committees formed to modify the current system will largely be made of current patent legal experts. ie the patent lawyers.
Sure the patent lawyers make money from helping to register patents, but the really big money comes when patents are contested. Low quality patents result in more contests and thus more legal fees, so what's not to like about them?
USPTO is also one of very few parts of Uncle Sam that actually make any income. They get the same fees regardless of the quality of the patent. With no feedback, that's not going to change either.
In short, we're screwed until the US collapses and a New World Order that ignores patents emerges
the patents in question are for vary specific manipulations to XML, that is only of any relevance to one market (healthcare record keeping, IIRC). I4i wrote a plugin for Office which MS made irrelevant by integrating the feature. IIRC I4i tried to tell them "if you want to do that, you'll have to license the patent" but MS ignored them and it got ugly.
Dissonance by arse. Its democracy plus the rule of law. You get to lobby for changes to the law, but until you are successful, you have to play by the old rules.
If you don't like it, there are a handful of places in the world where they don't have either and I'm sure if you offered to swap with one of the poor souls who live there, they'd readily agree.
I'm amused by the Supremes' decision that the burden of proof lies with the challenger. Perhaps no-one has told them that the law requires the USPTO to take the opposite view when granting them in the first place -- the benefit of the doubt goes to the applicant.
As for Microsoft, it would be lovely to think that they are currently running the numbers and deciding that the current system of legal Russian roulette has now reached the point of unbearability, but I won't hold my breath.
Today's lawyers are trained to do what it takes to argue the case in front of them.
Not to do what is right.
So you can have a lawyer argue one side of the argument for one case, defending Microsoft's abuse of the patent system, and then in the next case, argue the exact opposite. If it means a win for Microsoft. (Meaning that the lawyer is Microsoft's lawyer.)
If Microsoft wants true software patent reform, then they should be pushing to toss out all of the patents given to software systems and business processes.
Ok, I thought it was really a juddgement call whether the article about Apple copying an independent developers wi-fi sync app was really an act of thievery on Apple's part. However, when I see Microsoft suddenly complaining about companies squatting on patents and how that holds back innovation, then I know that we have crossed the line into "Do as I say, not as I do" land!!
This is the same Microsoft that (A) got worn down by Sun for writing its own flavor of Java?
B) Extorts $5 a handset from Android phone makers over alledged MS IP that is in the Android operating system? C) tried to intimidate Linux developers into line with spurious threats around unspecified patented IP that was alledgedly in the Linux kernel?
Or at least that's what I believe to be the saying in English..
I never could respect the patents as they are being used in the US; and I think software patents are even worse. IMO all its good for is money. Companies apply for a load of (often dumb) patents and when they stumble upon another competitor which happens to use something possibly matching their patent its "I'll sue!".
Good thing all that nonsense doesn't apply here in Europe. Sure; we also have patent systems, but they work a little different...
As to MS.. IMO they got what they had coming.
And buckets of it. After decades of using patents as a weapon to crush opposition and stifle innovation, MS have just got bitten on the ass by their own tactic. I can't say I am sorry.
The fact that they are trying to spin this into them being the wounded party and now a fighter for patent reform is laughable. These are the very same people who are blowing a gasket about the attempt to reverse-engineer the Skype protocol (to pick one example) and continue to use patent threats (Android, Linux, MPEG....).
Bend over and take your medicine, MS. You were part of making this problem, you are still part of this problem and you can never be part of the solution unless you walk the walk and much as you talk the talk.
So Microsoft were sued, for implementing an "obvious" way of embedding custom data structures into their document format using XML - a system designed specifically to build custom data structures, then remove it without any apparent consumer harm from their product (thus implying it is relatively valueless technology) - and still get hit for $200 big ones.
It always sounded almost as stupid as the US Patient decision to allow patenting the CONCEPT that Potatoes could be genetically engineered.
I think what M$ meant to say was "...it [as the 800lb gorilla] would now concentrate on trying reform US law to prevent abuses of the patent system, so that it would win every future legal battle, because Steve is a fluffy bunny who gives candy to sick children and helps little old ladies across the road".
I'm off to patent the idea for transporting people without moving by disassembling their molecules (dis-integrator), moving them to another locaion by high capacity network, and re-assembling their molecules in their original order (re-integrator), and I'll be suing anyone who actually makes this work for real ¬_¬