09.03.09

Gemini version available ♊︎

Microsoft Takes Software Patents Agenda Up a Notch

Posted in Europe, Free/Libre Software, Law, Microsoft, Patents at 8:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Global map in red shades

Summary: Microsoft’s very own patent troll rakes in billions in extortion money while Microsoft’s patent bully calls for software patents everywhere

FOR TWO CONSECUTIVE quarters Microsoft’s earnings have fallen by a third [1, 2], so the company scrambles to find new ways of making money. The most obvious way for Microsoft to do so is not by creating new cash cows but by milking someone else’s cow. Microsoft is primarily a marketing/legal software company, so software patents have usually been viewed by it as favourable to monopolists in their professional area (there are exceptions, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]).

The history of Microsoft’s software patent strategy is a subject that we covered last year and it includes patent trolling using entities external to Microsoft. Benjamin from the FFII describes Intellectual Ventures as “a monster troll with 27.000 patents and 362 satellite companies.” It is Microsoft's patent troll, created by Nathan Myhrvold with the support of Bill Gates. It is now extorting Microsoft's rivals and here is a little summary:

Intellectual Ventures (IV) has insisted for a long while that its accumulation of patents has nothing to do with patent litigation. In fact, the company has prided itself on not filing any lawsuits, despite the claim that its patent portfolio, comprising 27,000 patents, has brought in over $1B in licensing revenue. Recently, IV was rumored to have struck a $120M patent deal with Intuit Inc., and also struck deals with companies like Cisco and Verizon for between $200M and $400M apiece.

Here is a long report about Intellectual Ventures. It is a leech which produces nothing and taxes everything.

vancept LLC created the Intellectual Ventures Report in 2007, the first publicly available report of its kind. Prior to Avancept’s report, the public perception of the Intellectual Ventures’ portfolio was that it was simply unknown and unknowable, even though patent ownership is publicly available information. Avancept applied skills and techniques mastered through more than 30 years experience in law, business, technology, and journalism to uncover a tremendous amount of information about Intellectual Ventures. We are now pleased to offer a 655-page report detailing our findings.

For quite some time now, Microsoft has been lobbying for the Community patent, which virtually makes a Europe-wide patent system. Microsoft’s lobbying blog is now calling for a global patent system. Behind this call we find Microsoft’s main patent bully, Horacio Gutierrez (whom Microsoft promoted as a symbolic gesture to its new strategic focus). CNET and ZDNet have some coverage:

A senior lawyer at Microsoft is calling for the creation of a global patent system to make it easier and faster for corporations to enforce their intellectual property rights around the world.

In a blog posting on Tuesday, Microsoft’s Deputy General Counsel Horacio Gutierrez said that a backlog of patent applications internationally was needed to tackle the 3.5 million pending patent applications around the world — including around 750,000 in the US.

Benjamin (FFII President) actually thinks that “It is a good idea, especially to get rid of their infringing products.”

He adds: “A global patent court now! Otherwise there is too much forum shopping between Texas and Dusseldorf! We need legal certainty.”

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

Decor ᶃ Gemini Space

Below is a Web proxy. We recommend getting a Gemini client/browser.

Black/white/grey bullet button This post is also available in Gemini over at this address (requires a Gemini client/browser to open).

Decor ✐ Cross-references

Black/white/grey bullet button Pages that cross-reference this one, if any exist, are listed below or will be listed below over time.

Decor ▢ Respond and Discuss

Black/white/grey bullet button If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

A Single Comment

  1. twitter said,

    September 3, 2009 at 9:07 am

    Gravatar

    There is something delusionall about M$ these days and they can no more control the rest of the world than they can control the US. The legal reality is that that they are paying a heavy price for patent violations themselves and the US court system is getting rid of software and business method patents through Biski. Yet they continue to stomp around as if bad US laws do not apply to themselves and they can magically tax and dissapear their competitors. Guitierez’s statements are depressingly stupid, sort of like the pronouncements of Iran, and should be viewed as for domestic consumption. M$ is only capable of making their partners, employees, customers and investors miserable. The rest of the world has moved on.

DecorWhat Else is New


  1. Links 30/03/2023: LibreOffice 7.5.2 and Linux 6.2.9

    Links for the day



  2. Links 30/03/2023: WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy” and OpenMandriva ROME 23.03

    Links for the day



  3. Sirius is Britain’s Most Respected and Best Established Open Source Business, According to Sirius Itself, So Why Defraud the Staff?

    Following today's part about the crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ another video seemed to be well overdue (those installments used to be daily); the video above explains to relevance to Techrights and how workers feel about being cheated by a company that presents itself as “Open Source” even to some of the highest and most prestigious public institutions in the UK



  4. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 29, 2023

    IRC logs for Wednesday, March 29, 2023



  5. [Meme] Waiting for Standard Life to Deal With Pension Fraud

    The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ were concealed with the authoritative name of Standard Life, combined with official papers from Standard Life itself; why does Standard Life drag its heels when questioned about this matter since the start of this year?



  6. Former Staff of Sirius Open Source Responds to Revelations About the Company's Crimes

    Crimes committed by the company that I left months ago are coming to light; today we share some reactions from other former staff (without naming anybody)



  7. Among Users in the World's Largest Population, Microsoft is the 1%

    A sobering look at India shows that Microsoft lost control of the country (Windows slipped to 16% market share while GNU/Linux grew a lot; Bing is minuscule; Edge fell to 1.01% and now approaches “decimal point” territories)



  8. In One City Alone Microsoft Fired Almost 3,000 Workers This Year (We're Still in March)

    You can tell a company isn’t doing well when amid mass layoffs it pays endless money to the media — not to actual workers — in order for this media to go crazy over buzzwords, chaffbots, and other vapourware (as if the company is a market leader and has a future for shareholders to look forward to, even if claims are exaggerated and there’s no business model)



  9. Links 29/03/2023: InfluxDB FDW 2.0.0 and Erosion of Human Rights

    Links for the day



  10. Links 29/03/2023: Parted 3.5.28 and Blender 3.5

    Links for the day



  11. Links 29/03/2023: New Finnix and EasyOS Kirkstone 5.2

    Links for the day



  12. IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 28, 2023

    IRC logs for Tuesday, March 28, 2023



  13. [Meme] Fraud Seems Standard to Standard Life

    Sirius ‘Open Source’ has embezzled and defrauded staff; now it is being protected (delaying and stonewalling tactics) by those who helped facilitate the robbery



  14. 3 Months to Progress Pension Fraud Investigations in the United Kingdom

    Based on our experiences and findings, one simply cannot rely on pension providers to take fraud seriously (we’ve been working as a group on this); all they want is the money and risk does not seem to bother them, even when there’s an actual crime associated with pension-related activities



  15. 36,000 Soon

    Techrights is still growing; in WordPress alone (not the entire site) we’re fast approaching 36,000 posts; in Gemini it’s almost 45,500 pages and our IRC community turns 15 soon



  16. Contrary to What Bribed (by Microsoft) Media Keeps Saying, Bing is in a Freefall and Bing Staff is Being Laid Off (No, Chatbots Are Not Search and Do Not Substitute Web Pages!)

    Chatbots/chaffbot media noise (chaff) needs to be disregarded; Microsoft has no solid search strategy, just lots and lots of layoffs that never end this year (Microsoft distracts shareholders with chaffbot hype/vapourware each time a wave of layoffs starts, giving financial incentives for publishers to not even mention these; right now it’s GitHub again, with NDAs signed to hide that it is happening)



  17. Full RMS Talk ('A Tour of Malicious Software') Uploaded 10 Hours Ago

    The talk is entitled "A tour of malicious software, with a typical cell phone as example." Richard Stallman is speaking about the free software movement and your freedom. His speech is nontechnical. The talk was given on March 17, 2023 in Somerville, MA.



  18. Links 28/03/2023: KPhotoAlbum 5.10.0 and QSoas 3.2

    Links for the day



  19. The Rumours Were Right: Many More Microsoft Layoffs This Week, Another Round of GitHub Layoffs

    Another round of GitHub layoffs (not the first [1, 2]; won’t be the last) and many more Microsoft layoffs; this isn’t related to the numbers disclosed by Microsoft back in January, but Microsoft uses or misuses NDAs to hide what’s truly going on



  20. All of Microsoft's Strategic Areas Have Layoffs This Year

    Microsoft’s supposedly strategic/future areas — gaming (trying to debt-load or offload debt to other companies), so-called ‘security’, “clown computing” (Azure), and “Hey Hi” (chaffbots etc.) — have all had layoffs this year; it’s clear that the company is having a serious existential crisis in spite of Trump’s and Biden’s bailouts (a wave of layoffs every month this year) and is just bluffing/stuffing the media with chaffbots cruft (puff pieces/misinformation) to keep shareholders distracted, asking them for patience and faking demand for the chaffbots (whilst laying off Bing staff, too)



  21. Links 28/03/2023: Pitivi 2023.03 is Out, Yet More Microsoft Layoffs (Now in Israel)

    Links for the day



  22. IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 27, 2023

    IRC logs for Monday, March 27, 2023



  23. Links 27/03/2023: GnuCash 5.0 and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on Phones

    Links for the day



  24. Links 27/03/2023: Twitter Source Code Published (But Not Intentionally)

    Links for the day



  25. IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 26, 2023

    IRC logs for Sunday, March 26, 2023



  26. Links 26/03/2023: OpenMandriva ROME 23.03, Texinfo 7.0.3, and KBibTeX 0.10.0

    Links for the day



  27. The World Wide Web is a Cesspit of Misinformation. Let's Do Something About It.

    It would be nice to make the Web a safer space for information and accuracy (actual facts) rather than a “Safe Space” for oversensitive companies and powerful people who cannot tolerate criticism; The Web needs to become more like today's Gemini, free of corporate influence and all other forms of covert nuisance



  28. Ryan Farmer: I’m Back After WordPress.com Deleted My Blog Over the Weekend

    Reprinted with permission from Ryan



  29. Civil Liberties Threatened Online and Offline

    A “society of sheeple” (a term used by Richard Stallman last week in his speech) is being “herded” online and offline; the video covers examples both online and offline, the latter being absence of ATMs or lack of properly-functioning ATMs (a growing problem lately, at least where I live)



  30. Techrights Develops Free Software to Separate the Wheat From the Chaff

    In order to separate the wheat from the chaff we’ve been working on simple, modular tools that process news and help curate the Web, basically removing the noise to squeeze out the signal


RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts