Microsoft wants royalties from FOSS

[tleslie]

>From Richard V. Westerhoff
"Damages can only be awarded if proper notice of the patent was given.
Notice is given by the patent owner by marking the patented product with
the designation "patented," or the abbreviation "pat.," followed by the
patent number. Such notice should be applied to the patented article or
articles made by a patented process. If this is not possible, labels
bearing the notice should be applied to the packaging for the articles.
In the absence of this marking, actual notice of the specific patent
must be given to an infringer, and damages can then only be obtained for
infringements after notice. It is important to note that the infringer
does not have to have actual knowledge of the patent in the case of
marking; however, very specific notice must be given if the patent owner
does not mark, or is not making articles and, therefore, has nothing to
mark."

Seems to me unless MS has these pat. ## on their OS box,
or clearly written somewhere on their product,
they need to give notice of the exact infringments,
not to mention they should be doing that anyways.
Since damage is calculated on commence of notice,
and the 200+ infringements can probably be fixed before
another release of linux and FOSS programs,
its best to ignore MS,
if some day they actually specify a pat.# and a infringer,
then thats one thing, and the longer they wait
(1-6 years) depending on country, they got nothing anyways.
MS has already started the clock ticking, even in years past,
so they have to start being more specific.
If they keep up this generalization threat for too long,
that could be considered illegal, well not in the US were 
MS own the legal system, nothing is illegal for them 
in the US, but in  other countries.

Worst case all FLOSS distribution moves to Europe,
and MS will just set its sight on RedHat and Novell
for a $$$$ grab. IBM and Oracle might have somethnig to
say about that however.
Bottom line is there is nothing MS can do if it doesn't get 
specific, and if it does get specific then we simply
side step the infringements with other methods.

MS is doing the right thing by the FUD (for their benefit), 
they will never act,
its just a play to scare corp. IT from thinking twice to 
adopt anything other then MS products, for fear for 
infringement penalty.

This is all playing into the MS/Novell deal, and the obvious
reason Novell jumped at it. Novell isn't big enough to fight
MS ... but hopefully some time soon, the IBM's and Oracle's
will.

I would guess most of the 200+ infringements are over 4 years old,
so MS will get nothing, as they have no excuse to not have officially 
stated the violations and even the violators and the pat. ###
involved.

Damages are based on 1-3 times value of the patent infringed upon,
and also taking into account how similar technology would have faired
(i.e. what was net benefit of infringement).

I, unlike most, am all for patents, I just believe they should 
be used like they were intended, and not how they have become,
the tool of highly illegal extortion.


-tl





On Sun, 2007-05-13 at 21:18 -0400, phiscock-g851W1bGYuGnS0EtXVNi6w at public.gmane.org wrote:
> >From Slashdot today:
> 
> "Microsoft told Fortune magazine that various free software products
> violate at least 235 patents, and it's time to expect users of this
> software to pay up patent licensing royalties: 'Microsoft General Counsel
> Brad Smith and licensing chief Horacio Gutierrez sat down with Fortune
> recently to map out their strategy for getting FOSS users to pay
> royalties. Revealing the precise figure for the first time, they state
> that FOSS infringes on no fewer than 235 Microsoft patents.'"
> 
> Just in time to take over from the imminent collapse of SCO...
> 

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