Major developments are being reported at the moment on the Alcatel-Lucent/Microsoft saga [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Alcatel-Lucent is an example of a struggling -- if not dying -- company that reaches out to its portfolio for survival ("defensive" no more [1, 2]). Well, it may have just hoovered up half a billion dollars off of Microsoft for what's evidently junk patents.
A U.S. District Court judge in Los Angeles has ruled that Microsoft Corp. will have to pay Alcatel-Lucent more than $500 million for infringing on two patents.
One patent covers how software users to fill out forms. The other is related to the use of a stylus on a tablet computer.
Why would a patent troll agree to this? Don Marti explains how the GPL strengthened Red Hat's bargaining position. In a normal patent licensing negotiation, the patent troll would demand a per-user license fee that would be passed along to the vendor's customers. But the GPL specifically prohibits Red Hat from doing this; if Red Hat agreed to pay per-user royalties, it would be in violation of the GPL and would lose the right to distribute the software at all.
Who will win the "cold war" brewing between commercial software companies and open-source advocates over software patents?
Essentially, these talks are about harmonising substantive patent law, including areas such as priority of invention, the grace period, the definition of prior art and loss of right provisions. However, I wonder whether Brimelow – who always considers her words very carefully – is hinting that other things may now be on the agenda. It is interesting that when she spoke to me about this, and also in the BBC interview, she talked about users of the patent system raising the issue of mutual recognition. In that way, any talks on the subject can be seen as being responsive and not as policy-makers going out on a limb.
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And, who knows, after the In re Bilski case is finally resolved at either the CAFC or the Supreme Court, Europe and the US may even be a little closer with regard to the controversial areas of business methods and software patents.
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