Microsoft Will Not Sue Over Linux Patents

San Muel writes "In an official statement, Microsoft has said it has no immediate plans to sue after alleging patent infringements by open-source vendors for the time being. The company goes on to say that, essentially, it could have done that any time in the last three years if it wanted to. So what's the purpose of these bold announcements? '[John McCreesh, OpenOffice.org marketing project lead] added that while Microsoft may not have plans to sue, it could be using the threat of litigation to try to encourage corporate customers to move to those open-source product vendors with whom it had signed licensing agreements, such as Novell. "Microsoft has spent time and money accumulating patents. Maybe it has started using that armory to move corporate customers to open-source software that Microsoft approves of."'"

Re:Legality

[rucs_hack]

Unless they actually do something libellous in their campaign there's not a whole lot we can do about it.

However their threats are empty, and only likely to sway companies still entrenched in the 'threaten to use open source to secure discounts' camp.

The big problem for Microsoft is that they are no longer the big player they once were. They know this, and this is an ill judged attempt to say they are still in charge. It's only to be expected.

Unfortunately words don't mean much when money is at stake, even their most devout customers will start to become edgy if they see competition moving to open source solutions and saving money. There is no loyalty where money is concerned.

Ever wonder where MS got the number.

[supersnail]

Here [itbusinessedge.com]

What the researcher is saying is the with 235 potential patent violations
Linux scores lower then most proprietary software he has looked at.

Incidently nowhere does he say who owns the 235 patents so given the amount of
Operating System related patents filed they are more likly to belong to IBM or HP
(DEC VAX, Tandem Non Stop etc. etc. ) than microsoft.

Pure FUD!
 

Re:Actually..

[Russ Nelson]

Laches

Re:Legality

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole thing with IE being bundled in the OS? Seriously, it's a damn browser which is probably appropriately a part of an OS in this day and age.

You need to go back and learn more about it then. The reason they concentrated on this is because an antitrust court case by law cannot have more than X items (iirc 12 comes to mind). So the DOJ picked the browser and ther infamous attack on Netscape the company.

The browser was also deliberately integrated into the OS after the antitrust case started, because they wanted to make it a core part of the OS to work around the antitrust case.

Bundling apps leveraging a monopoly to gain share in another market is illegal, hence the antitrust case. Telling the big box builders to not install NN and only have IE installed or they will have to pay more for their windows is illegal, hence the antitrust case. And on and on it went. Get the picture?

Re:Legality

[mr_mischief]

IANAL, but I could've sworn that diligent defense was for trademarks. I don't believe you lose your exclusive rights for failing to defend either patents or copyrights vigilantly.

OTOH, you generally can't say you're aware of an infringement, wait years to do anything about it, and argue that those additional years while you failed to notify the alleged infringing party specifically what they are supposedly infringing upon count for additional damages. An attorney friend of mine tells me the damaged party must notify the infringing party of the infringement and order that they stop infringing. Any damages up to that point or after the infringing party is notified and continues to infringe can be considered. The damaged party does not have the right to purposefully prolong the infringement and ask for extra damages, as it is their responsibility to limit their own damages as much as possible. A vague, "You are infringing on my property in some unspecified way" is not notification enough.

Re:Open Letter to Brad Smith

[morgan_greywolf]

Comparing SCO and Microsoft,

You don't need to compare Microsoft to SCO. SCO was Microsoft's puppet, funded by PIPEs whose primary investors were likely Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures and/or one of several other ways that Microsoft used to hide the fact that they themselves provided the capital to keep SCO's case going. At least until RBC and BayStar pulled out.

These tactics are all part of the same plan -- to hurt the credibility of Linux and open source in the eyes and minds of CxOs everywhere so they will feel scared enough to quit using Linux. It's all FUD and Brad Smith, Microsoft's counsel, damned well knows it.

Re:Legality

[Chandon Seldon]

I've never really been behind the anti-Microsoft movement that has in the past insisted that they're abusing their monopoly.

They were found, in court, to have abused their monopoly pretty badly. If you ever have some free time, I suggest you sit down and read the judge's "Findings of Fact [usdoj.gov]" in that case. It pretty readable in spite of being a formal legal document, and once you'll read it you'll have a much better understanding of why a judge thought they were abusing their monopoly.

Re:Microsoft does not "approve" of Novell Suse Lin

[Locutus]

Don't know about NTerprise but Citrix didn't go out of business. The market thought they were dead(1996?) when Microsoft threatened to kill them by building their own thin client system into the next version of MS Windows( NT v4 ). I made a nice profit off that since it hammered Citrix stock and made it a cheap buy. For some reason, investors thought Microsoft could actually build a MetaFrame class software system in just a few months and pre-load it into Windows NT. I knew better and made a nice profit off that, but that's another story. Back to Citrix. Citrix MetaFrame thin client required access to the underlying OS and so Citrix needed to license parts Win32 from Microsoft. Remember that 1996 was around the time of the thin client hype so you can see that Microsoft would become quite 'aware' of something which might promote the use of thin clients and could be a threat to MS Windows. Also, WinFrame clients were multi-platform and Citrix was doing quite well with its MetaFrame product. Microsoft wanted to purchase MetaFrame but Citrix wouldn't cave to Microsofts lowball numbers and threatened publicly to build their own system and ship it with WindowsNT. I would imagine that the Windows source code licensing fees were also brought up and used to threaten Citrix. But, eventually, Microsoft and Citrix came an 'agreement'. Microsoft would get MetaFrame source code to include in Windows( renamed MS Windows Terminal Server ) under license for 3 or 5 years and after which time, Microsoft would own the product and source code. You know, the same kind of deal which Microsoft SQL Server from 'partner' Sybase( Sybase SQL Server ).

I don't know what makes MetaFrame better than Microsoft Terminal Server but something keeps businesses buying and using it. My guess is that the people at Citrix know what they are doing since they originally created the market back in the OS/2 days while Microsoft is primarily a marketing company directing developers based on threats and not "innovation". Ie, they're pretty bad at leading and improving software for customers and better at producing software which isolates technology to their Windows platform. IMO.

I found this article on the Microsoft vs Citrix history. It's pretty long and I've only started to read it so hopefully, my recollection is close to what the article says happened:
http://noncitrix.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/citrix-m icrosoft-crisis-1997-usa-today-article/ [wordpress.com]

LoB

Related Link

[fatalfury]

Groklaw [groklaw.net] has an interesting writeup about this situation, with insightful quotations from Eben Moglen on the Microsoft/Novell agreement. Here's a brief excerpt:

The business model of threatening to sue people works if the people are 12-year-olds. It does not work real well if they are the pillars of finance capitalism. So as a party engaged in annual "be very afraid" tours, you're going to start to get pushback by enterprise customers who say, "That's *us* you're threatening."

Now what if you could reduce their sense of being the people who are made afraid? What if you could find a way to give them quiet and peace -- and make a little money on the side -- so that the only people who are left quaking when you did your annual "Be Very Afraid" tour were the developers themselves? Now you would have given yourself a major ecological boost in swinging your patents around and threatening to hurt people.

Deals for patent safety create the possibility of that risk to my clients, the development community. If enterprise thinks that it can go and buy the software my clients make from some party who gives them peace from the adversary in return for purchasing a license from them, then enterprises may think they have made a separate peace, and if they open the business section one morning and it says "Adversary Makes Trouble for Free Software", they can think, "Not my problem. I bought the such-and-such distribution, and I'm OK."

This process of attempting to segregate the enterprise customers, whose insistence on their rights will stop the threatening, from the developers, who are at the end the real object of the threat, is what is wrong with the deals.