04.15.11
Senior Figure at Nokia: “This isn’t a deal between Nokia and Microsoft, this is a Microsoft take over.”
Elop-led Nokia a headless chicken for Microsoft hardware
Summary: What Nokia did with Microsoft is worse than what Yahoo! and Novell did with Microsoft and patents have a lot to do with it, even hardware patents
According to this new report which “walterbyrd” brought to our attention last night (in IRC), sources inside Nokia said precisely the same thing Techrights said in its headline as soon as the Microsoft-Nokia deal was announced (our title was “Microsoft’s Nokia ‘Deal’ is More Like a Takeover, Patents Pose a Problem”).
A senior figure at Nokia has reportedly said: “This isn’t a deal between Nokia and Microsoft, this is a Microsoft take over.” That’s what the article from the British press says. Consider the second part of the title we used at the time (“Patents Pose a Problem”). Just days later it turned out that we were right because Nokia gave it away in interviews and only days ago we wrote about a new push for software patents (through the unitary patent, which is a euphemism) in Europe. This happened amid Bill Gates' lobbying in Europe and Nokia intervention under the leadership of Gates' employee, Microsoft President Elop.
The EPO seems delighted by the possibilities of this unitary patent, which means yet more patents (i.e. more patent monkey business, more money for bureaucrats, less productivity for everyone else). It summarises its gloating-fest as follows:
European Commission presents its draft regulations on unitary patent protection
“Cost of a single European patent set at €680 for protection in 25 member states” says this additional article which the president of the FFII alludes to by writing:
600EUR for an EU-wide patent, recipe for a disaster
Gun culture anyone? Bubble economies?
Michel Barnier, who lobbied for this mess on several occasions can be seen in the photos there. He is serving the interests of large corporations whether he admits this or not.
In other patent news, the Trend Micro patent lawsuit strategy against Free software and other entities suffers a blow:
Despite Trend Micro’s history of patent aggression, reliable sources are indicating that Trend’s patents at issue may be invalid which is a positive development for Fortinet.
In December 2010, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (US PTO) issued office actions on the two related Trend Micro patents (5,623,600 and 5,889,943), rejecting every claim as invalid. This finding is consistent with the opinion of the staff attorney at the International Trade Commission in the Barracuda Networks case that Trend’s ‘600 patent is invalid.
As we all ought to know, Barracuda is actually on the side that Free software favours (among these two). Its CEO, Dean Drako, said at the time: “I would much rather spend my time and money and energy finding ways to make the Internet safer and better than bickering over patents.” Companies like Microsoft can do nothing but bicker over patents because in crucial areas Microsoft’s products are a non-starter. The same goes for Nokia, which now aligns itself with Microsoft, as part of a virtual takeover. Unless Elop is sacked and the deal revoked, Nokia is no longer much of a spouse of convenience to Linux. █
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