Bonum Certa Men Certa

Architect of Microsoft's Patent Strategy Has Left the Building

Senjatrollet
The world`s largest troll, Norway



Summary: Marshall Phelps left Microsoft after equipping it with a software patents portfolio similar to the one he created for IBM

OVER a year ago we alleged that Microsoft's Marshall Phelps had failed to sign Red Hat on a patent deal and was therefore dismissed. The closest Microsoft ever got to 'taxing' Red Hat was its Amazon deal and maybe that case involving Acacia (assuming that Microsoft was a backer). As rightly pointed out in this new post, software patents are antithetical to software freedom.

Few topics can illicit a more guttural response from an open source advocate than the topic of software patents. In many respects they are the very anti-thesis of open source. In security there has been one particularly irksome patent that has bedeviled the industry for years and probably held back innovation and progress in gateway anti-virus technology. Now after all these years, as many have claimed in the past, the patent is on the verge of being over turned as invalid. The best news is that it very well may have been the open source community that showed it as invalid!


We now have it confirmed that Phelps left Microsoft and according to the following new article, Marshall Phelps left Microsoft after helping their anti-Linux strategy and doing similar work at IBM (which is also in favour of software patents). From Law.com: [via]

Last week, MDB Capital Group--an IP-focused investment bank that promises to help investors understand "the hidden value of intellectual property assets and future technological leadership"--held what it billed as its first annual "Bright Lights" intellectual property conference, bringing together IP-centric speakers from a variety of small and medium-size companies.

The Prior Art attended the opening panel, which included the heads of two of the largest, and most litigious, patent-holding companies—Erich Spangenberg and Paul Ryan, the CEO of Acacia Research Corp., the largest publicly traded patent-licensing company.

The panel also included representatives from consultancy ipCapital Group and RPX Corp., which buys litigated patents in order to strike deals between NPEs and operating companies, as well as IP guru Marshall Phelps. (Phelps is something of a legend for building IBM's legendary $2 billion patent-licensing operation; most recently, he helped Microsoft build up a patent-licensing operation before leaving the company last year.


When Phelps was in Microsoft they managed to sign the patent deal with Novell and later on he wrote a book on the subject.

Novell poses a risk to Free software [1, 2]. Novell's patents become ammunition against GNU/Linux itself and Nortel -- a company whose name is similar to Novell -- is in a similar situation: [via]

Nortel may raise $1.1 billion from patents



Nortel Networks Corp., the insolvent Canadian phone-equipment maker, may get as much as $1.1 billion (U.S.) for technology patents that analysts say would benefit potential bidders including Research In Motion Ltd.


Several days ago Florian Müller openly criticised the OIN, which is part of IBM's reason/excuse to keep software patents in tact. "Mueller calls OIN a scam," says the headline at ZDNet. It's an overstatement. It also says:

Much of what Mueller has been doing of late is setting himself as an active FOSS advocate, and that’s a good thing.


That's still in doubt (FOSS advocacy), but the agenda which favours abolition is clear and that's the right route to take. In his latest post he proposes a grading system for conduct, suggesting that companies get classified for their attitude towards software patents.

Harmfulness ranking of ways to use software patents



[...]

That trend isn't difficult to imagine. Just look at the current situation surrounding smartphones, a field in which there's now a number of lawsuits and countersuits among big players as well as different non-producing entities ("patent trolls") targeting large vendors.

In light of all that's going on, which ways to use software patents are more harmful than others? After giving it some thought, I have arrived at this harmfulness ranking:

1. most harmful: malicious strategic patent holders pursuing exclusionary/anti-competitive objectives

2. second-most harmful: non-producing entities ("patent trolls")

3. least harmful: cooperative strategic patent holders granting licenses to entire portfolios on acceptable terms

[...]

"Trolls" are a feature -- not a bug -- of the software patent system

The above subhead is a summary of a statement that Carlo Piana, a leading European FOSS lawyer, recently made on identi.ca/Twitter.

If one believes that certain general ideas should be "monopolizable" through patents, then it's a natural consequence that some will obtain (or acquire) patents and try to derive commercial benefits from them without ever creating their own products. Far be it from me to defend the concept of "patent trolls" -- I just want to point out that it wouldn't be practical to impose an obligation on every patent holder to make actual products. At the most it might be possible to limit the procedural rights of a non-producing entity to the right to be indemnified (excluding injunctive relief).


Companies that still defend software patents are not genuine proponents of software freedom. And yet, it is better to meet half way and accept the fact that companies can change over time.

“Other than Bill Gates, I don’t know of any high tech CEO that sits down to review the company’s IP portfolio.”

--Marshall Phelps

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Live as You Preach
technology is fast becoming dysphoric
Computers Got Smaller, So GNU/Linux Got Bigger
Many people here recognise the lack of urgency (or need) to get expensive new laptops
 
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VII: Washing Their Hands After Corruption and Abuse
"Tragedy or comedy?"
Culling Bad RSS Feeds of Bad Sites
Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater
If 'Microsoft v Techrights' is Dealt With by a 'Microsoft Court' (or a Court Outsourced to Microsoft)
More on that later
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 09, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 09, 2025
Gemini Protocol Turns Six in 10 Days From Now
If you haven't tried it yet, then give it a go today
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Addition Addiction and Nitride
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Science, Hardware Projects, and Democracy Receding
Links for the day
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year