Microsoft FAT patent falls flat
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Patent office rejects one of four patents on File Allocation Table format for Windows, though Microsoft can appeal.
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Almost everything that can be said has been said about the latest moves by Microsoft to create Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) about Linux. Countless pundits and analysts have pointed out that Microsoft threats are toothless. Some have noted that Microsoft has singled out Linux and OpenOffice, the biggest threats to its monopoly on operating systems and office suites. Surely Microsoft could claim that the *BSDs infringe on similar patents if not the same ones. But the *BSDs do not pose as great a threat to the company. Others have pointed out that Microsoft would be insane to pull an SCO and sue its own customers. Still others have noted that IBM and/or OIN could respond to a patent war with a massive retaliation in patent infringement claims. I have no doubt that Microsoft has lifted a lot of GPL code (more likely algorithms) for Windows, which would prevent Microsoft from following through with its threats. To do so would require that Microsoft open its own code to scrutiny. The list goes on, and others have covered the angles very well. There is one perspective I haven't yet seen, at least not the way I propose to deal with it. This perspective follows below.
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The $1.5 billion settlement against Microsoft is only one result of the music formatâs tangled history.
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CHICAGO -- Genentech Inc. lost a ruling on a patent that generates an estimated $300 million a year in royalties from rivals using the technology to make cancer and arthritis treatments.
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(InfoWorld) - The Linux faithful might be staring down the barrel of another round of Microsoft's legal taunts, but at last week's Linux Foundation Summit, the reaction was more ho-hum than oh-no. "The reality is that they are not going to sue a single customer," says Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. "It would not be in their business interest. Microsoft is not going to sue their customers." Zemlin says one fact alone â that most corporate Linux users have a mixed environment with Microsoft software â will protect users from the software giant going after them based on patent infringement. The patent issue has risen to near the top of the Linux Foundation's list with the signing last year of a cross-licensing patent deal between Novell and Microsoft, in which Microsoft promised not to sue Novell Suse Linux users for patent infringement. Several similar deals have followed since with Linux vendors Xandros and Linspire. As part of its charter, the Linux Foundation offers legal-protection services for developers to safeguard the future of Linux. Microsoft claims that Linux violates 235 of its patents, although it has yet to detail what those patents are. Critics contend the issue is meant to create uncertainty among potential corporate Linux adopters. But Zemlin says the contracts are hurting Linux "only in the fact that Microsoft uses them to create a perception of risk that in reality is not there." Many others at the foundation's first-ever summit -- a collection of some of the most influential Linux kernel designers, software developers, and user companies -- took that same position. "Open source is safe for us to use: That is the message that I want to get out there," said Chris DiBona, Google's open source program manager. "I would be shocked if Microsoft didn't have patents that read on Linux," said Mark Radcliffe, a partner at law firm DLA Piper US who advises companies on intellectual property issues. "Will they enforce them is the question. Companies using Linux don't have to fear patent suits." Radcliffe thinks Microsoft is in a difficult position because it probably couldn't avoid spearing its own customers with any legal action. "I think the Microsoft [Novell] deal was a misfire," he says. "I think what Microsoft's actions recognize is that Linux is here to stay. And any competitor will use tools to try and slow it down." Others say that patents have become a real problem for the computer industry. "They are sold to the public as being about supporting innovation, but their impact on industry is a nightmare," says Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu Linux. "They don't help IBM, they don't help Sun, and they don't help Microsoft. But the free software guys are worried about this." So worried, that the Free Software Foundation added to its near-final GNU General Public License (GPL) 3.0 specific language that addresses patent deals that could erode the unique open source qualities of the Linux operating system. The hype has reached such proportions that Dan Frye, vice president of Linux and open technology at IBM and head of its Linux Technology Center, said during a panel session at last week's summit, "everybody, just chill when v3 comes out." GNU GPL 3.0 is slated for final release on June 29. Linux creator Linus Torvalds, who is employed by the Linux Foundation, wrote on the Linux kernel mailing list last week that the Linux kernel may stay under Version 2, which he said is a better license, but that Sun's choice of licensing for open-sourcing Solaris could influence the decision. The Linux kernel is made up of a number of components, developed by various individuals under a number of different open source licenses, which means all those stakeholders would have to agree to switch to Version 3. "People are looking to Linus for that kind of leadership," says Google's DiBona. "I think v3 will be evolutionary, which is what it is supposed to be." Others say the issue of GPL 3.0 license adoption goes much deeper than just patent concerns. "Even if v3 is better than v2, it has to be significantly better to undertake all the pain to change the kernel code [licensing]," said James Bottomley, a kernel developer and CTO of SteelEye Technology, which makes high-availability software for Linux systems. "We are not going to waste six months to change the kernel. This is a pragmatic argument, not a legal one."ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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Don't expect a patent deal between Microsoft and Ubuntu Linux distributor Canonical anytime soon. CEO Mark Shuttleworth says he won't pay for something he thinks has no legal merit.
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Microsoft is fighting a rejection by US patent authorities of a patent for its FAT filesystem, the company said on Thursday. Meanwhile, it&#39;s celebrating a jury decision clearing it of patent infringement charges
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Microsoft has lost a patent battle in South Korea concerning input mode technology in its Office software. The decision could force the Redmond company to halt sales of the popular productivity suite in that country, but it is fighting back.
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Microsoft is not the realÂ patent threatÂ Linux and open source developers should be worried about, said Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth. In fact, the software giant will itself be fighting against the software patents system within a few years, Shuttleworth predicted.
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U.S. blue chips ended nearly unchanged  on Thursday in light volume but technology dipped lower as a  broker downgrade on the semiconductor industry rattled  investors.
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Microsoft may have to pull its Office suite from the shelves in South Korea as a result of losing a patent lawsuit in that country, according to published reports.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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Plans by Microsoft Corp to charge royalties on a library of patents are looking uncertain after the US Patent and Trademark Office rejected a key software patent claimed by the company.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in a case that could make it harder to obtain patents, with technology giants Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. supporting a change. The case, involving a patent on gas pedals for vehicles, has the Supreme Court examining how lower courts arrive at a decision that an invention was obvious, and therefore not patentable. In the case, Teleflex Inc. and Technology Holding Co., holders of the electronic gas pedal patent, sued KSR International Co. for patent infringement, but the defendant argued the courts should invalidate the gas pedal invention for obviousness. After oral arguments Tuesday, some patent lawyers said they expected the Supreme Court to overturn a 4-decade-old approach to deciding obviousness often called the teaching-suggestion-motivation test. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has used this test, saying that there must be some proven teaching, suggestion or motivation to lead a person of ordinary skill to combine "prior art" products into a new invention for that invention to be declared obvious. Other patent lawyers said they expect little movement from the Supreme Court, although any change would have a huge impact on patent holders. If the Supreme Court throws out the motivation test, all current patents could be suspect, said Paul Andre, an intellectual property lawyer with Perkins Coie LLP, in an interview. A change in the motivation test could mean fewer patent infringement cases brought by patent holders, because they would fear that courts would rule their patents invalid, he said. "The alleged infringer would have an easier time challenging a patent," he added. But most patent lawyers seem to believe the Supreme Court won't change the law, with the court last acting on the obvious standard in a 1966 ruling, he said. "If the Supreme Court wanted to do it, they'd have changed it by now," he said. But justices asked several questions about the obviousness standard, with Chief Justice John Roberts suggesting courts needed more flexibility to determine obviousness. The court will likely require the Federal Circuit to come up with a new standard, said Sharon Barner, an intellectual property lawyer with Foley and Lardner LLP, in an interview apart from the court hearing. Cisco and Microsoft, joined by three other companies, filed a brief in the case saying the motivation standard makes it too hard to prove obviousness, leading to bad patents. Microsoft and Cisco have been sued for "allegedly infringing dozens of questionable patents," wrote their attorney Peter Sullivan, of Hughes, Hubbard and Reed LLP. The motivation test "establishes too lenient a standard for patentability, and it has had a stifling effect on true innovation because it encumbers ideas well beyond the limits imposed by Congress for patentable inventions," Sullivan wrote in his brief to the Supreme Court. But a group of patent lawyers filed a brief opposing a change in the law, saying a change in the obviousness standard could make it difficult to get a patent on any invention that combines old products. The current standard is established and well-thought, wrote lawyers for the American Intellectual Property Law Association. Without the motivation test, there's no standard to determine obviousness, said Ronald Riley, president of the Professional Inventors Alliance, in an interview. "Things are often obvious in hindsight when they weren't that obvious," he said. "Big un-innovative ... are trying to make the invention game a king's sport because they hate having to compensate inventors."
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Forget the online rumors; Ubuntu Linux has no plans to sign a deal with Microsoft to protect it from lawsuits for alleged infringement of unspecified patents.
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The software maker is moving along -- but not enough to get investors excited.
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Companies say customers will see no change in product availability or support.
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The US Patent and Trademark Office has preliminarily rejected a Microsoft Corp. patent on a system for recognizing computer files, a victory for &quot;open source&quot; advocates who believe