06.02.11
Lodsys Patent Attacks on Android (Linux) Developers Come From Microsoft’s Former CTO
Summary: Further discussion about Microsoft’s attacks on Linux through known proxies
AS we showed earlier this year and beforehand, Microsoft’s former CTO had extorted Android makers using the patent pile he had accumulated with financial help from Bill Gates and Microsoft. We have already alluded to Apple’s role in it, which ought to tell iPhone/iPad developers that they should rebel against Apple, not ask for Apple’s help. As Jan Wildeboer has just put it, not only does Microsoft’s former CTO dodge the issue; Pro-Microsoft charlatan Florian Müller too is hiding this fact while also being regularly challenged (by yours truly too) to denounce Intellectual Ventures.
Did @fosspatents inform that the lodsys patent was formerly owned by Intellectual Ventures? Whereever there’s a #swpat case, MSFT is close.
Nothing ever changed at Microsoft. It is a bunch of manipulative sociopaths who use proxies to wage their wars. Let us remember that Intellectual Ventures has become notorious for passing patents to wage wars too (in case someone, for example, does not accept its taxing scheme). Speaking of proxies, we opine that amid the turmoil at Nokia, “Microsoft wants to destroy Nokia and get its *hardware* patents cheaply (not just software patents) to extort *all* Android sellers.” (to quote my latest dent) Or as Malroy put it, “Nokia thanks to the efforts of the Trojan Elop, has become like a pair of Soviet era made shoes — worth more for the parts used than the finished pair of shoes.”
Microsoft did the same thing to Yahoo! and to Novell, which is now owned by a partner of Microsoft along with the UNIX assets. Scary, eh? Microsoft’s buddy/mate Attachmate is scary enough as an owner of UNIX, so Pamela Jones came back from her retirement phase just to post this article titled “What Unix Copyrights Does Novell Own?”
Before I passed the reins of Groklaw content to Mark Webbink, I had obtained some additional early AT&T/Regents of California documents from the University of California. Thanks to Mark, I finally had time to scan them in and upload them and add them to Groklaw’s permanent collection. I’d like to share some highlights with you, at his request.
What stands out to me the most is that AT&T licensed BSD code from the Regents, repeatedly and very early. I will show you the agreement. And another document confirms that AT&T didn’t register copyrights on 32V, relying on trade secret protection only, back when you had to take certain steps to own valid copyrights.
Novell, now Attachmate, may think it owns all the pre-1995 UNIX copyrights, thanks to Novell’s victory over SCO at trial, but all that was established at trial was that Novell did not *transfer* any pre-1995 copyrights it owned to SCO. The trial didn’t parse out and establish what precisely Novell owned, what it had obtained from AT&T in the first place, or what AT&T owned, for that matter.
Salesforce’s CEO said that Microsoft is "somewhat disgusting”, but we would rather just say that Microsoft is manipulative and it is trying to use all sorts of intellectual monopolies right now, obviously to derail the inevitable domination of Linux. Microsoft has already destroyed Novell using a patent deal. SLE* is still Microsoft’s (and Attachmate’s) tool for replacing Red Hat systems, for example, with Microsoft-taxed GNU/Linux. Meanwhile, despite another milestone, OpenSUSE gets neglected and with the exception of some hype about World IPv6 Day, there is almost not a word about it. Proprietary software like Vibe is all we have left from Novell in YouTube (many new videos from Novelldemo, such as this one).
Say no to software patents and help end the destructive nature of the Microsoft thugs, who are no longer just inside Microsoft (some formed the world biggest patent troll, Intellectual Ventures, while others founded a media-meddling patents booster known as “Gates Foundation”).█
