MICROSOFT is hurting quietly, which is why it needs to re-release Vista and still see sales declining (there's distortion of the numbers). IDC accepts that GNU/Linux (on the desktop) currently has at least 4% market share (this is pretty major coming from the 'Microsoft press' and a Microsoft-funded analyst). Gartner made a similar claim about 3 years ago and it does not surprise us. We wrote about GNU/Linux market share so many times because disinformation regarding the subject is far too prevalent.
"Assuming things go patent reformer Microsoft's way, answering multiple choice, true/false, or yes/no questions in a classroom could soon constitute patent infringement. Microsoft's just-published patent application for its Adaptive Clicker Technique describes how 'multiple different types of clickers' can be used by students to answer questions posed by teachers. The interaction provided by its 'invention', explains Microsoft, 'increases attention and enhances learning.' Microsoft's Interactive Classroom Add-In for Office (video) provides polling features that allow students to 'answer and respond through their individual OneNote notebooks, hand-held clickers, or computers, and the results display in the [PowerPoint] presentation.' So, did Bill Gates mention to Oprah that the education revolution will be patented?"
Microsoft's view of patents a pre-emptive tool or revenue model?
As US Supreme Court agreed on Monday to give Microsoft a hearing related to a 2009 court order that required it to pay $290 million to i4i for patent infringement related to its high-profile product Microsoft Word, Microsoft itself has been on a buying spree collecting patents that cover a range of its products.
Also recently Novell's acquisition of Attachmate had raised questions about a deal component which included sale of 882 patents to a Microsoft led consortium which had raised concerns among FOSS community regarding the future of UNIX and OpenSUSE.
[...]
ACACIA:
Microsoft licensed 74 patents from Acacia Research Corp. and Access Co. Ltd, a Japanese firm that had acquired PalmSource. The portfolios of patents are related to smartphone technologies and also included IP rights over technologies created by Palmsource.
Microsoft also licensed patents from Acacia related to technology for enhancing image resolution in May and in January had licensed patents from Acacia subsidiary related to software compilers.
To all those that still claim there are no #swpat in Europe http://is.gd/iJRuu is just one of the 60k software patents at EPO
VirnetX Holding Corporation, an Internet security software and technology company, declared that it has been granted Patent # EP99958693 by the European Patent Office. Meant for network protocol for secure communications, the patent builds on the company's important patent portfolio that addresses critical communication security needs of large enterprises, managed service providers and technology OEMs.
EU central patent court is a fraud: "Formstein and Epilady, but how many of us can confidently name 5 other examples?"