Bonum Certa Men Certa

IBM is Not a 'Patent Troll' But Increasingly, Over Time, Troll-Like

When products aren't selling those who have amassed patents weaponise them and tax the rivals' products

Ginni Rometty
Photo source (modified slightly): The 10 Most Powerful Women in Technology Today



Summary: Groupon, which has come under a software patents attack from IBM, strikes back and spin sites like IAM keep denying that the term "patent trolls" means anything at all

EARLIER this year we chastised IBM for attacking companies using software patents. What became mainstream news today is "Groupon counters IBM over software patents." We found many articles about it this morning [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and they indicate that IBM's victims are fighting back. IBM's 'blowback', so to speak, did not sink the stock or anything like this [1, 2], but surely this will generate negative press for IBM.



"We don't call IBM a "patent troll", but some pundits do (John Dvorak for instance called them the biggest patent troll)."When thugs like IBM attack using software patents (whilst actively lobbying for them) they essentially put pressure on other companies, including those not enamoured with/fond of patents, to file for 'defensive' patents, perpetuating the problem. Now that IBM is openly attacking legitimate companies using such patents (and surely extorts others) one can hope that IBM will go bankrupt fast, or alternatively appoint a new CEO who doesn't choose to be a bully. Some pundits now call IBM a "patent troll", which definitely harms IBM's reputation and ruins the brand.

If anyone among our readers chooses to cancel a contract with IBM (one probably should) or refuse/reject their marketing people, tell them it's due to patent aggression as this can definitely help change their policy. Looking for someone to blame for IBM going rogue, lobbying for software patents and attacking legitimate companies using software patents? Blame Manny Schecter as well, not just the CEO. He's the company's patent chief and he has been rather outspoken as of late against any nation which rejects software patents.

We don't call IBM a "patent troll", but some pundits do (John Dvorak for instance called them the biggest patent). Some also call Yahoo a potential "patent troll", so IAM -- partly funded by patent trolls -- attacks them. To quote IAM: "While we wait to see how potential acquirers value the IP, some in Silicon Valley are getting worked up about just what might happen to those patents. Last week the well-known tech journalist and author Steven Levy published a piece on his Backchannel blog which asked, “Will Yahoo become a patent troll?”"

"Microsoft even has a standalone patent troll entity called "Microsoft Licensing", putting aside all sorts of satellites and other patent trolls is uses to blackmail rivals."It's not news that IAM is a trolls denialist. To quote the concluding paragraph: "There will no doubt be many more column inches – on this blog and elsewhere – written on the Yahoo sale before it reaches its conclusion. Hopefully it will give members of the patent and investor communities an opportunity to discuss just how a public company – failed or otherwise – should properly value its intangible assets particularly in the current climate. But please, whatever happens, lets leave the troll moniker out of it."

As we have seen in the case of Nokia after Microsoft had hijacked it, Nokia patents could be passed to patent trolls who later also paid IAM (literally, the same troll in the case of MOSAID). In today's IAM output one can also see/learn that it has "been widely reported in Chinese-language (and, increasingly, English-language) media over the past few days that Huawei may be receiving hundreds of millions of US dollars in patent licensing fees from Apple." Given what Nokia has done to Apple and what Apple has done (and is still doing) to many Linux-centric companies, it's hard to find any sympathy for any of these companies. They put patents before products as time goes on and sales of actual product are harder to make (Apple has suffered a significant decline recently). While we never called companies like IBM, Yahoo, Nokia or Apple "trolls", some people do call them that and to a certain degree it's indeed trolling given how they position themselves. Microsoft even has a standalone patent troll entity called "Microsoft Licensing", putting aside all sorts of satellites and other patent trolls is uses to blackmail rivals.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Promoting Microsoft Windows With LLM Slop
What is the policy at BetaNews regarding LLM slop?
Alex Oliva, the Potential 'Successor' of RMS, Has a New Web Site
More freedom for Alex Oliva
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 16, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, February 16, 2025
Links 16/02/2025: Nostalgia for Physical Media and the US Government Actively Promotes Pro-Kremlin Politicians in the EU
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/02/2025:Life, Cynicism, and languages
Links for the day
Links 16/02/2025: Oligarchs "Collect Your Data and Control Your World", Global Temperatures Shoot Up
Links for the day
Links 16/02/2025: "Microsoft Is Laying Off Employees" and Internal Dissent Brewing at Facebook Over Regime Complicity
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 15, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, February 15, 2025
Links 15/02/2025: Harms to Health, Public Domain, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/02/2025: On Autistic People, AuraGem Over HTTPS
Links for the day
The Cyber Show (C|S) Speaks of the "Rise of the Nerd Reich."
This 'Valentine Episode' is quite good
Azure is Turning 17 This Year, Still Losing Money and Staff
Hallmark of pyramid schemes, deriving "value" out of things that do not really exist?
Strong Momentum for the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as Winter Approaches Its End in Boston or in the Northern Hemisphere
FSF's founder, Richard Stallman, gives another talk in Italy in 9 days from now
The 'Drunken Plagiarists' Are Harming Journalism About GNU/Linux
They lessen the incentive to do real journalism abut GNU/Linux
Female Nazis and racist Swiss women
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Richard Stallman on RISC-V and Free Hardware
Invidious is under attack by Google
Links 15/02/2025: Erasing of American Science and Tesla SLAPPing Critics
Links for the day
IDG 'Reviews' of GNU/Linux Now Contain LLM Slop
It's typically ads or commercials... or sometimes spin disguised as news
Gemini Links 15/02/2025: Spectacles and "Before Sunset", Moving Domains Out of the US
Links for the day
Microsoft Has Only $17,482 Million Left, "Cash on Hand" Sank 40 Billion Dollars in 2 Years
Microsoft runs low on money in the bank
YouTube Layoffs Mean That YouTube is Still Losing a Lot of Money (Net Income or Profit Almost Definitely Negative)
In more recent years Google defunded many vloggers
In Gopher and Gemini Protocol People Abandon Services Based in the United States
There's no resistance whatsoever
Python and Microsoft: Pandas Should Have Known OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft Excel Are Different and Competing Things
now we're meant to think that in order to open ODF files we need some functions with "Excel" in their name
Not Only Windows, Surface, and "Hey Hi" PCs; Microsoft's Hardware Ventures Are a Dumpster Fire; HoloLens Mixed Reality Hardware Now Axed Altogether and Staff is Miserable
Microsoft is in a terrible state
Certificate Authority (CA) Let's Encrypt Now Down to TEN (0.3% of the Whole) in Geminispace
The number of capsules that use Let's Encrypt is, according to Lupa, about to fall to single-digit figures
Links 15/02/2025: University Price Hikes and Copyright Action Against Slop Companies
Links for the day
Slopwatch: All Those New 'Articles' Are Fake and Crafted by Chatbots (LLM Slop)
Google News is promoting these as "Linux" news; they're not even made by humans
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 14, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, February 14, 2025