Bonum Certa Men Certa

Standards and Patents - From Victim and Skeptic to Attacker and Abuser

The New York Times has published an article which is making some big waves at the moment, even though it does not contain any new information.

Microsoft sang a very different tune in 1991. In a memo to his senior executives, Bill Gates wrote, "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today." Mr. Gates worried that "some large company will patent some obvious thing" and use the patent to "take as much of our profits as they want."


For your reading pleasure, here is a larger fragment of the text which the author referred to.

PATENTS: If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. I feel certain that some large company will patent some obvious thing related to interface, object orientation, algorithm, application extension or other crucial technique. If we assume this company has no need of any of our patents then the have a 17-year right to take as much of our profits as they want. The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can. Amazingly we havn’t done any patent exchanges tha I am aware of. Amazingly we havn’t found a way to use our licensing position to avoid having our own customers cause patent problems for us. I know these aren’t simply problems but they deserve more effort by both Legal and other groups. For example we need to do a patent exchange with HP as part of our new relationship. In many application categories straighforward thinking ahead allows you to come up with patentable ideas. A recent paper from the League for Programming Freedom (available from the Legal department) explains some problems with the way patents are applied to software. of our profits as they want."


Here is an older article on this issue:

[Richard Stallman:] ...Thanks to Mr. Gates, we now know that an open Internet with protocols anyone can implement is communism...

...Mr. Gates' secret is out now--he too was a "communist;" he, too, recognized that software patents were harmful-until Microsoft became one of these giants...


This is all self explanatory, is it not? Microsoft chooses as a weapon what it used to detest, denounce, and fear. Hypocrisy knows no bounds. One might argue that Microsoft has been a passive cogwheel in the evolution of the flawed USPTO. But many would beg to differ.

A report published by an EU task force on intellectual property claims that small businesses benefit from a patent system, despite lacking almost any participation by the small business community.

Instead, the report, titled IPR (intellectual property rights) for competitiveness and innovation, was written up almost entirely by large corporations and the patent industry.

[...]

The report does note objections from the likes of patentfrei.de and Sun Microsystems, which were recorded at some length in the report. But this does not appear to have impacted the conclusion of the report in any way

[...]

Jean-Pierre Laisne, of ObjectWeb, an open source software community, said that he found the report useless: participants were told that all their contributions would be recorded but at the end only those of Business Software Alliance and Microsoft were used.


So, we should now know who has become the biggest fan of spurious patents. We also know that the voices of small businesses get ignored.

In another new article from the New York Times, which was published over the weekend, Microsoft's ties with the Bush administration (the context being antitrust) get a mention, but that is really beside the point. The main messages here is that legistlation is written by the wealthy, to server the wealthy, and to make them more wealthy.

There are other items on patents which are worth mentioning. The first one argues that software and algorithms are a form of art more than they are a science. Thus, patents of this kind are bound to give exclusive ownership to culture, creativity, and expression.

Merriam-Webster defines "art" as: "The conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects." It defines "engineering" as: "The design and manufacture of complex products."


Whether these patents are valid or not, one must not forget that no specifics have been disclosed. Neither do we know if patents were truly counted, nor do we know whether they have any substance at all.

Speculation runs amok, ranging from a boundless greed and loathing in the corporate culture at Microsoft (from the top down) to scaring FOSS developers and users into submission by the threat of a legal sword of Damocles hanging collectively over their heads. But this is all theory and speculation -- great fodder for discussion, but nothing concrete.


A lot of hot air, no doubt.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Technology: rights or responsibilities? - Part V
By Dr. Andy Farnell
Microsoft's Acquisition of Activision (to Fake Revenue Growth by Buying Revenue) Was a Failure
Of course the mass layoffs at Microsoft aren't just a Microsoft thing
Stagnant, Shrinking Businesses and "IBM's Corporate Culture Since the Late 1980s... Over 35 Years."
Recently, IBM was using share price as a talking point, insisting the company was doing OK while tens of thousands were being laid off
SCO's Darl McBride Dead at Age 64
There's hardly any information about it, except we know he reached bankruptcy and 3 years later he died at a relatively young age
 
Facebook's Debt Has Soared to All-Time High of Nearly 50 Billion Dollars
But the corporate media pretends all is well (while mass layoffs continue and slop takes over the social control media)
Geminispace Makes It Past 4,200 Capsules on November 1st
At last!
Links 01/11/2024: Election Interferences by X/Twitter/Musk, Strava as Espionage Tool
Links for the day
The October 2024 Web Server Survey Shows a Further Collapse for Microsoft in the Servers Market
Microsoft experienced the next largest loss of 699,464 sites (-3.45%)
Gemini Links 01/11/2024: TLS Sucks, twytere.com Announced
Links for the day
Links 01/11/2024: Few Things Are Cheaper Than This Antenna and "Nothing Lasts Forever"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 31, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, October 31, 2024
R.T.O. is Another Name (or Acronym) for Voluntary Layoffs
Amazon is trying to get many workers to leave on their own
Links 01/11/2024: World News, Political Catchup
Links for the day
[Meme] Probably the Worst Possible Time to Get Information From Social Control Media
Musk does not want to prevent disinformation from spreading and the same is true for Facebook and TikTok; they have their own interests
Update on Litigation Against the European Patent Office (EPO) at the ILO Administrative Tribunal (ILOAT)
Rewards and compensation for staff have long fallen, resulting in many experienced colleagues leaving and causing further declines in quality and compliance
Gemini Links 31/10/2024: NNCP, Declutter the Web, Cost of Community
Links for the day
Links 31/10/2024: Supermicro Plummets 33%, Block and Dropbox Mass Layoffs
Links for the day
Links 31/10/2024: Environmental Anxiety, Profound Changes in Hardware Market
Links for the day
Links 30/10/2024: TSMC Concerns and North Koreans in Ukraine War
Links for the day
Facebook is for Zombies
Social control media is for fools
Microsoft Now Has $235,290,000,000 in Liabilities, They Grow Over Time in Spite of Mass Layoffs (So Expect More Layoffs)
expect more mass layoffs
Links 31/10/2024: DST Woes, War Updates, Amazon RTO Backlash
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/10/2024: Attention Economy and Gemlogs
Links for the day
Happy Halloween
October is nearly over
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 30, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 30, 2024
For the Record: Linux is Controlled by the United States of America
"This is going to make many question the openness and inclusivity of the work done by Linux Foundation"
Microsoft: XBox Hardware Revenues Down About 30% (Ignore the Buzzwords and Activision Activity Dressed Up as "XBox")
For context, in a previous quarter XBox hardware sales were down by about 50%
Cooking the Books With "Cloud" And "AI" Was Not Enough to Fool Microsoft Investors
"Microsoft Shares Drop on Disappointing Azure Growth Forecast"
[Meme] It Irritates Them That FSF Still Promotes Software Freedom
"An open letter in support of Richard M. Stallman"
At the End, Facts Typically Win, Liars Walk Away
very recent Stallman talk
Gemini Links 30/10/2024: Mind-Seeing and Heart-Knowing, Views on Perspective
Links for the day
IBM Has Collapsed This Past Week, thelayoff.com Deletes Rumours of Mass Layoffs in the United States
Visa is having a crisis right now
Links 30/10/2024: Extreme Surveillance in Schools, More Openwashing by OSI
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/10/2024: Death Notes, Mindfulness, and More
Links for the day
The Role of Publishers on the World Wide Web (and Gemini Protocol, Among Other Digital Transmission Protocols)
social control media is a cesspool that spreads disinformation and hate, in turn fuelling wars and conflict
More Than a Week Has Passed, DeVault Has Declined to Deny Serious Accusations Against Him
The whole "Stallman Report" thing backfired very spectacularly
IBM's Silent Mass Layoffs to Last Another Month, Rumour That Another Wave is Happening Right Now
A special Halloween for some families
W3Schools Says "Statistics Are Important Information", But Abandons Them After More Than 20 Years
No update for over half a year
Preserving Information
Those who seek destruction of information tend to be evil people, whose evildoing they strive to delete
Volkswagen Cheated Us and Created Cars We Didn't Ask For
just like "smartphones", they don't last very long and they diminish in value very fast
"All Systems Operational"
We can now devote more time to writing articles and maybe some time soon making more videos
[Meme] Good Books Don't Give You "Likes"
But they give you information
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 29, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 29, 2024
[Meme] Microsoft's CoC Downtime
"Your system is down"
Manchester United 'Sacks' Microsoft?
United's relationship with Microsoft hasn't (or won't) last long
[Meme] 16 Years to Hire a Black Person (in the US)
After having close to 1,000 employees
StatCounter's Shortcomings and More
So while GNU/Linux and Android continue to grow at Windows' expense there will be other operating systems growing. They're not controlled by GAFAM (e.g. Google, Apple, Microsoft).