On Aug 13, 2009, at 1:14 PM, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
Where has Microsoft's junk patents given them any money? Unless they
are using extortion (possible) to quietly threaten potential FOSS
defecties away, that is. They are not selling those, and they have
never sued anyone (well, one). It also seems that not many are
taking their threats too seriously - we did not exactly see the FOSS
world grind to a halt, after all.
If they are not making much money off their silly patents, and they
are losing, then their loses outweight their gains.
Or in plain English, you can't.
From the USPTO website:
Searching US Patent Collection...
Results of Search in US Patent Collection db for:
AN/microsoft: 12062 patents.
You are claiming that with 12062 patents since 1976 assigned to
Microsoft, the ones that are software related have netted them a total
of zero or lost them money.
Your are also discounting the the fact that people did not compete due
to patent protection which may be in the end more valuable than
licensing fees.
You are also went from claiming software patents to "junk patents".
Define "junk patent" and explain how the term applies to all, as you
did, software patents.
The FOSS world exists not because of there are no software patents, it
exists because people have dedicated their work to the public domain,
which is a very different thing. IBM has dedicated many of their
patents to the public domain because they are a hardware marketing
company, and as the old IBM addage says "nothing sells hardware better
and faster than software".
Geoff.
--
geoffrey mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Jerusalem Israel geoffreymendel...@gmail.com
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