sogrady: Interesting comments but I doubt Microsoft is near the end of its lifeline… (or perhaps was Ballmer the anonymous poster!)

See my small cartoon: http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2007/05/ballmers_dream.html

Bye,
Oliver

Great post from RedMonk about patents.Frankly my contribution to this discourse is not so distinguished at all….

I’ve been following IP law for around 10 years now. Until SCO, I don’t think I came across any case where a company attempted to sue the customers of a product violating their patent before they won a suit against the company that made the product. I think I only saw a couple of cases where a company sued customers - and those customers were very big corporations, who had been very aware of the ongoing litigation, even providing testimony, and were obviously aware of the ruling in their supplier’s patent case.

Personally, I feel that any patent reform really should include a provision that says that one cannot sue the users of a product before one wins a suit against the maker/developer of that product. (If the users and developers are the same group/people, then one would first need to sue for the manufacture of the infringing product, and only after winning that suit, would one be able to sue them for continued use after said court decision. However, in this situation, if the developers continued to use the product after losing their development case, treble damages would be guaranteed - since they were present in the first trial, they would obviously be aware of the ruling in said trial.)

“I have heard others use, and have used myself, the analogy to nuclear deterrence and the doctrine of MAD with regard to patent actions in the technology industry. There’s an important point that many people miss.

MAD assumes that all players are rational, and that each is more frightened of its own destruction than of any alternative. I am not sure that assumption holds in technology.

Companies start, mature and die on something like twenty- or thirty-year cycles in our industry. A company nearing end of life is likely to be a large holder of patents. If it appears that a broad patent action can stave off demise for even a year, and so provide additional shareholder value, it’s likely that the company will push the button. What if SCO, for example, had been armed with something besides that silly System V copyright popgun?

People like to point at MAD as a good example of game theory gone right for humanity. It was — and is — a near thing, though. It’s awfully scary that Stalin succeeded in building one, and fortunate that he died soon after. It’s sobering to think what use Mao might have made of a nuclear weapon. And what if containment fails and a small terrorist pseudo-state
gets one?

The long-term solution has to be disarmament. Carrying the analogy back home, we need patent reform.”

On a more amusing note, I tried to get a fun scenario together for an endgame for Microsoft on http://lwn.net/Articles/236345/ , as in the past couple of weeks since Microsoft’s declaration of total patent war against everyone a few amusing things have happened:
a) there have been some more exciting patent lawsuits against them, including Alcatel suing for damages for another time slice,
b) China’s big entry into the US beached whale carving business
c) OIN, Sun, Linux-Something declaring to stand ready for retaliation if Microsoft makes stupid moves

So far, it’s all falling into place nicely

2) I actually don’t consider Amazon “that bad” regarding patents - they get a bad rap for filing the “one click order” patent, but to the best of my knowledge they’ve never actually enforced it… check out Apple’s patents on the iPod interface - just as ridiculous. So my focus wasn’t on how either IBM or Amazon are “perceived” in terms of good/bad on patent issues. The primary difference with Amazon is that Amazon was another vendor and Microsoft has directed its threats at customers.

3) Hey, we can’t all remember everything now can we - you managed to squeeze in the other 99% - comments are for filling in the other small 1%

4) Microsoft hasn’t said they wouldn’t either. Now I HIGHLY doubt in this day Microsoft would sue a customer (obviously, see SCO…) BUT, it’s important to note that even with the Microsoft and Novell agreement - Microsoft and Novell simply agreed not to sue each other’s customers (and that’s the only group)… if Microsoft wouldn’t sue the customers to begin with, why make that deal? Could it have been to simply imply that Linux users were somehow violating IP (similar to calling every corporate Linux users the equivalent of a music pirate).

I doubt will see any end to this nonsense soon and that’s the shame of it all. If there was a lawsuit, it would capture headlines for a few weeks, then corporate lawyers would swoop in and end anyone talking… then things would drag on for years and every now and then you would see an update in the press, but for the most part the issue would go away… Instead of litigating, you get the highly popular “be very afraid tour” every 6 months.