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[News] Microsoft P3ned in the Indian Press for Patent Hypocrisy

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Latha Jishnu: The mouse that bit Microsoft
PATENTLY ABSURD

,----[ Quote ]
| Here’s what Gates wrote in an office memorandum in 1991. “If people had 
| understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were 
| invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete 
| standstill today. . . I feel certain that some large company will patent some 
| obvious thing related to interface, object orientation, algorithm, 
| application extension or other crucial technique.”     
| 
| This was the year after Microsoft launched Windows 3.0, the first of its new 
| operating systems that would become hugely popular across the world. Yet, 
| three years down the line, Microsoft had changed from a kitten that was 
| content with copyright protection to an aggressive patents tiger. In 1991, 
| Microsoft had filed fewer than 50 patent applications whereas last year it 
| was awarded 1,637 patents, almost a 12 per cent increase in the number of 
| patents it received in 2006. According to IFI Patent Intelligence, the rise 
| in Microsoft’s patents portfolio bucked the general trend in 2007 when the 
| number of patents issued by the US Patents and Trademark Office dipped by 10 
| per cent. Apparently several thousand of the company’s filings are still 
| pending.          
| 
| All this may prompt the reader to conclude that there is indeed a direct 
| correlation between IPR and growth — and wealth — as the company claims. Not 
| true, says Mark H Webbink, a US Supreme Court lawyer who is a recognised 
| voice on IT issues. Charting the company’s revenues, R&D spending and patent 
| filings from 1985 onwards, he shows that the spike in patent filings occurred 
| long after the Microsoft “had become well established and was being 
| investigated for its monopolistic practices”. Webbink contends that patents 
| did not spur the launch and rapid growth of the mass market software 
| industry. On the other hand, patents have become a threat to software 
| innovation, he warns.         
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http://www.business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?autono=330566

The mouse that bit Microsoft

http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/aug/06spec.htm


Related:

Critic of Software Patents Wins Nobel Prize in Economics

,----[ Quote ]
| doom writes "You've probably already heard that the Nobel Prize
| for Economics was given to three gents who were working on advances
| in mechanism design theory. What you may not have heard is what one
| of those recipients was using that theory to study: 'One recent
| subject of Professor Maskin's wide-ranging research has been on the
| value of software patents. He determined that software was a market
| where innovations tended to be sequential, in that they were built
| closely on the work of predecessors, and innovators could take many
| different paths to the same goal. In such markets, he said, patents
| might serve as a wall that inhibited innovation rather than
| stimulating progress.' Here's one of Maskin's papers on the
| subject: Sequential Innovation, Patents, limitation (pdf).
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http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotYourRightsOnline/~3/170631743/article.pl
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