Bonum Certa Men Certa

Latest Analysis of Patent Assault on Linux

Larry Elllison on stage
Photo from Oracle Corporate Communications

Summary: There is no going back for Linux/Android domination, but Apple and Microsoft try to collude against it now, with patents, patent trolls, and Larry Ellison (who calls Steve Jobs his "best friend" and idol")

THE ANTICS of Microsoft have pushed it further away from "patent troll" realms and more into the realms of organised crime. Racketeering is, after all, a crime. But provided one is big (as in rich) enough and sufficiently connected in governments and/or media, the laws do not get enforced properly or even regularly. The media can ensure the public opinion gets slanted and politicians need not take action to please the population. We see a lot of this in Occupy Wall Street.



"The media can ensure the public opinion gets slanted and politicians need not take action to please the population."As we explained on numerous occasions last month, Microsoft has a bunch of lobbyists and corruptible 'journalists' whom it uses to spin what it is doing as "acceptable" and a matter of enforcing the law rather than breaking the law. Caution is required in the face of Microsoft lobbyists' spin that seeks to portray Google as a patent aggressor. It is very far-fetched and it is clear that they try to paint Google, the victim, as a company deserving Microsoft's extortion. As the SCOracle trial takes a break the Microsoft FUD resumes in a noticeable way. Those who cannot become competitive turn litigious and even extort companies. Why actually make stuff and compete when you can pay some lawyers to attack the competition and rip it off using legal instruments and illegal tactics that are a breach of the RICO Act? A company that copied other people's work and then used illegal tactics to stomp on them falsely claims (owing to a Chronicle columnist who ended up helping Microsoft with a propaganda piece) that Android "stands on Microsoft's shoulders".

Yes, Microsoft is trying to claim that it owns Android and people need to go to Microsoft to "license" Android, Microsoft's competition. How it that different from what protection rackets always were? It is not different. "It reads to me as though the MS lawyer is saying "It's an Operating System, and we own Operating Systems"," writes one person in USENET.

This type of nonsense helps 'normalise' extortion using a PR campaign which deceives even self-proclaimed FOSS proponents (who don't even use Linux). For shame. This is how public opinion gets distorted.

"Yes, Microsoft is trying to claim that it owns Android and people need to go to Microsoft to "license" Android, Microsoft's competition."The MSBBC, as usual, bats for that same side and we cannot help wondering if Katherine Noyes actually wrote this headline (probably the editor's choice). Racketeering is not a joke and Microsoft is not a "fan" of Android. Microsoft is attacking Android and someone in regulatory agencies should take action. "Software patents are legalised extortion" says this new headline from an opposer of software patents, who writes:

By refusing to kowtow to the US software patent racket, Europe could experience a new golden age of technology, says Mike Lee.

From its theoretical description, a patent system for software seems like a great idea.

Rather than keeping their best code to themselves, software engineers can register their creations with the government, creating a marketplace of functionality. Anyone creating new products can save time and money by licensing, rather than reinventing.

If the patent system actually worked anything like that, software patents would be a no-brainer, but it doesn't, and they're not.

In fact, quite the opposite. Instead, the patent office contains vaguely worded descriptions written and held by lawyers, not for accelerating innovation, but for taxing it.


Many proponents of software patents are parasites like watchtroll, who already has his own words of little or no value. Patent lawyers cannot speak on behalf of people who make the software that patent lawyers are trying to tax; generally speaking, people who never practised software do not deserve a voice on the matter unless they become producing parties rather than bullies (for hire) who help subvert competition and tax everyone. Timothy B. Lee put it well in the following new article which he posted in Forbes:

People Should Listen to Computer Programmers about Software Patents



[...]

So too with software. The people complaining loudest about software patents are the very people whose efforts software patents are allegedly designed to encourage. If most of them think they’d be better off without that “protection,” that should give policymakers cause for soul-searching.

I doubt it’s a coincidence that this Sullivan reader is a patent law professor. While software patents don’t benefit the average computer programmer or software firm, they’re tremendously beneficial to the lawyers who make a living prosecuting and litigating software patents, and the law professors who make a living training the next generation of patent lawyers.


In Microsoft's case, much of the lobbying comes from patent lawyers and managers, not developers. And there are no patents mentioned because they know they can achieve more by empty threats than by truthful means that are not dubious and even borderline criminal. Microsoft's friends at Blackboard also leveraged patent FUD and got a lot of flak for it. Here is a little update about that:

The last time Techdirt wrote about the learning company, Blackboard, was in the context of its attempt to enforce a ridiculously broad patent on the field. Even before the patent was thrown out completely, Blackboard made an unusual move: it offered to exempt open source projects and those who contributed to them from its patent attacks:

As part of the Pledge, Blackboard promises never to pursue patent actions against anyone using such systems including professors contributing to open source projects, open source initiatives, commercially developed open source add-on applications to proprietary products and vendors hosting and supporting open source applications. Blackboard is also extending its pledge to many specifically identified open source initiatives within the course management system space whether or not they may include proprietary elements within their applications, such as Sakai, Moodle, ATutor, Elgg and Bodington.

Commitments to limit potential patent protection are uncommon, particularly for enterprise software companies. The Patent Pledge -- in terms of its sweeping scope, strong commitment and public nature -- is unprecedented for a product company such as Blackboard.


A proper action to take would be throwing away this patent altogether. Such patents, broad software patents to be more specific, should not exist. Some companies are bragging about these because the USPTO allows this to happen. We need to also strike at this root, the institutional failure, in order to prevent companies like Microsoft from fraudulently claiming ownership of Linux. Speaking of which, Microsoft's partner Tuxera is still enabling Microsoft to tax Linux through file systems. Companies like Tuxera and Novell too are part of the problem we ought to tackle.

It's not just Microsoft though. Its allies from Apple are attacking too. All that Apple can do now is sue, sue, sue. It has failed for over a year. So has Jobs' "best friend" Larry Ellison. Samsung is tired of playing defence, so it "demands Iphone 4S source code" as things get more abrasive:

KOREAN ELECTRONICS GIANT Samsung is demanding the source code for the Iphone 4S firmware in its latest spat with Apple over patents.


Incidentally, Red Hat's Open Source site had a new blog post about "Patent reform and patent totalitarianism". To quote:

Touted as the most extensive revision of the patent law since 1952, the America Invents Act of 2011 was signed by the President on September 16. You might think in light of the celebration and rhetoric, that the Act was tackling the big problems such as patent trolls, broad and abstract patents, the billions squandered in the smartphone wars, or opportunistic litigation against users. You might think that. But you would be wrong.


It is not just about smartphones, either. But the smartphones market has become a good symptom of a broken system.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Brett Wilson LLP Sent Over 5 Kilograms (or Over 12 Pounds) of Legal Papers! Because Writing About Microsoft Abuses is 'Illegal'.
How do you guys sleep at night? On a big pile of Microsoft money?
Extremism as a Weapon Against GNU/Linux (Microsoft Lunduke)
He ought to know the Halloween Documents. Wasn't he a Microsoft employee when these came out?
 
Microsoft-Sponsored Propaganda Site Has Removed False 'Hit Piece' About Dr. Stallman (With Fake and Misrepresented Imagery) But Only After 4 Years
So they only removed that page some time around 2025, i.e. about 4 years after it had been published
Always Check Your Inputs
Garbage in, garbage out. Or wrong assumptions, wrong corollary.
Dan Neidle Said That Tax Evasion Facilitator Mr Zahawi (Working to Silence Bloggers Through Brett Wilson LLP) Targeted Not Only Him (But The Others Kept Quiet)
"Mr Neidle said after repelling Mr Zahawi he was contacted by bloggers and tweeters who had received similar threats. They deleted their work “and in most cases never commented publicly on anything again”."
SLAPP Funding Transparency Urgently Needed in the UK and Elsewhere (in Practice, Not Just in Theory)
Writing about crime - including Microsoft crime - is not a crime
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 09, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 09, 2025
Elodie Bergot Still Doing Illegal Things at the EPO, Based on the Local Staff Committee Munich
They keep taking away from the staff while compelling the staff to do illegal things
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: Extreme Testing and Golang Documentation in Geminispace
Links for the day
Vice President of the European Patent Office (EPO) Complains That Techrights Gives Visibility to Legal and Technical Issues at the EPO
"Follow-up on enquiries relating to Dir. 1218 and 1001"
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com and Various Slopfarms That Lie About "Linux" and Are Promoted by Google News
Google does not seem interested in tackling this problem
Links 09/07/2025: War Updates and Microsoft Moving to India to Cut Costs
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Was Always a 'Movement' of Inclusion of Tolerance
Even the licences themselves remove access barriers
Links 09/07/2025: "Subprime AI Crisis" and "OpenAI May Be in Major Trouble Financially"
Links for the day
Huge Piles of Legal Papers ('Paper DDoS') Do Not Impress Judges and Regulators
they just make judges and regulators even more suspicious of the eagerness to resort to 'paper DDoS'
Lunduke Isn't Even Hiding His Anti-Linux Agenda (From "Linux Sucks" to "Linux is Pedophiles")
just trying to make a lot of trouble
Some People Use Computers to Get Actual Work Done
Tolerance and inclusion must extend to acceptance that some people don't agree with you, might never agree with you, and imposing what allegedly works for you on them is unreasonable
Example of "Old" Things That Still Work
The notion that something being "old" implies it must be discarded is typically advanced by those looking to sell more of something
Some Scheduled Maintenance Later Today
Typically the most vulnerable service during short interruptions is IRC
Computers Are Just a Tool
People don't get married because they love weddings, folks don't join the army because they love war, and most drivers don't drive to work because they love cars
Apple Way Past Its Prime
Apple deserves a decline
The FSF's SysOps Team Recovered From Serious Hardware Issue Within Hours
About half a day ago I noticed that all/most GNU/FSF sites were not reachable and thus reached out to a contact for any details
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 08, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 08, 2025
Slopwatch: Turning Bugs Into FUD About "Linux", Getting Basic Facts Wrong
all the screenshots are of fake articles; we don't want to link to any
Technical Reasons, Not Politics: With Wayland "it feels a lot like Linux from 20-25 years ago, which is horrendously frustrating, because it feels like we wasted one or two decades of progress and stability"
Lately, quite a few benchmarks were published to show Wayland compares poorly compared to what we had
PCLinuxOS Recovering From Fire
It looks like a nightmare scenario, where even backups onsite get destroyed
Links 09/07/2025: More Heatwaves, Officials Culled in Russia
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: XScreensaver and Resurrection
Links for the day
Links 08/07/2025: "Cyberattack Deals Blow to Russian Firmware" and "Cash Remains King"
Links for the day
FSF40 T-shirt message
by Alex Oliva
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Creativity, Gotify with NUT Server, and Sudo Bugs
Links for the day
More on "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
"pepe the frogs"
Links 08/07/2025: Sabotage of Networking Infrastructure, Microsoft XBox Game Pass Deemed “Unsustainable”
Links for the day
Dalai Lama Succession as Evidence That Determined, Motivated People Can Reach Their Nineties
And we need to quit talking about their death all the time
Many Lawyers (for Microsoft) and 1,316 Pages to Pick on a Litigant in Person Who Exposed Serious Microsoft Abuses
Answers must be given
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Ancillary Justice and Small Web July
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 07, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 07, 2025