Summary: New examples of Microsoft agenda being served by A J Park and Outercurve, which is a Microsoft proxy

EARLIER on we mentioned patent actions from Microsoft, the world's leading patent extortionist, which goes as far as New Zealand to promote software patents. In this interesting message from a local group Microsoft's role gets explained as follows:

I've been getting harassed a bit today :) by representatives from Microsoft and AJ Park (and another MS apologist, Chris Auld of Intergen, MS' favourite partner) who are trying to convince the government to retract its position excluding software from patentability, as is proposed in the Patent Amendment bill which is scheduled to be passed into law sometime in the next session of parliament.

This small but well-funded pro-patents group have written this http://www.ajpark.com/articles/2011/04/fog_warning_on_computer_implemented_inventions.php

ostensibly written by AJ Park's Matt Adams, but, based on a slip by Waldo Kuipers of Microsoft NZ in a recent tweet, most likely written by Microsoft.

Their aim appears to be to use clever semantic arguments to indicate that people (some, but by no means all, of whom are affiliated with the NZOSS) who made submissions to the Commerce Commission Select Committee in the original *democratic process* were actually not arguing against software patents, and were, in fact, inadvertently arguing *for* them...

We wrote about A J Park in [1, 2, 3]. The situation in New Zealand is important because it echoes much of what we see in Europe. Microsoft typically lobbies for software patents by proxy, just as it openwashes itself by proxy (e.g. Outercurve [1, 2]). Here is the latest example of openwashing .NET through its proxy (fully run and funded by Microsoft). Darryl K. Taft is characteristically playing along with Microsoft on this, helping the whitewash efforts of a convinced monopoly abuser. Microsoft depends on this type of spin to harm the competition; it helps sell proprietary software (lock-in) by removing perceived distinguishers while also pretending to represent the position of its competition. ⬆