 El Quintron... a faint odor of kerosenePremium
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Re: Microsoft Embraces Another Linux Company said by jdong:It's probably goes along the lines of... " Hi, greetings from MS Legal dept.... We noticed your Linux router violates this list of Linux patents.... You have two choices: (A) Give us 5% of your profits and we'll call it even, or (B) We'll take you to court and probably put you out of business Have a great day!" So yeah, legal bullying. Figured as much... so assuming a company would make its home in a country with no software patents, would they be immune from this type of thing so not in the US, GB or JP?
Or can they not conduct business in these countries either?
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 jdongEat A Beaver, Save A Tree.Premium
join:2002-07-09
Rochester, MI
kudos:1 | They won't be able to sell "infringing" devices here either.
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garywk
join:2001-03-06
Clarkston, WA | said by jdong:They won't be able to sell "infringing" devices here either. So, you figure these companies are having to sign NDA's as part of their agreements on what they're paying for so they can't release to the open source community just what patents they are alleged to have violated? If not, I don't see why they aren't saying just what's been "violated" as it's in their interest to make changes so the "violations" no longer exist and they no longer have to pay MS's tax. |
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jdongEat A Beaver, Save A Tree.Premium
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Rochester, MI
kudos:1 | said by garywk:said by jdong:They won't be able to sell "infringing" devices here either. So, you figure these companies are having to sign NDA's as part of their agreements on what they're paying for so they can't release to the open source community just what patents they are alleged to have violated? If not, I don't see why they aren't saying just what's been "violated" as it's in their interest to make changes so the "violations" no longer exist and they no longer have to pay MS's tax. I suspect that said violations probably cover the core ideas of what they're doing, and it'd be far more expensive to attempt to "circumvent" the violations than to just play MS the money to stay away.
As long as these companies don't have a strong moral attachment to the principles of FOSS (which frankly a lot of these kinds of companies don't care too much about, for better or for worse), this can be a reasonable approach.
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El Quintron... a faint odor of kerosenePremium
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But they would be able to sell "infringing" devices in countries without software patents?
In reality what kind of fight would they be facing? Do they have to prove their devices aren't infringing?
Or are the patents granted to M$ so absurd there's no way they couldn't infringe?
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jdongEat A Beaver, Save A Tree.Premium
join:2002-07-09
Rochester, MI
kudos:1 | said by El Quintron:But they would be able to sell "infringing" devices in countries without software patents? In reality what kind of fight would they be facing? Do they have to prove their devices aren't infringing? Or are the patents granted to M$ so absurd there's no way they couldn't infringe? I'd imagine the latter. It's likely a clear cut case of "yeah, ok, the patent as written means my device infringes", like the HTC "slide screen to unlock display" Apple patent.
Unless the little company has a good legal force and can deal with a temporary halt of sales to pursue the infringement suit, like what happened to Buffalo (the router company, not sued by Microsoft though), it's likely cheaper to submit.
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El Quintron... a faint odor of kerosenePremium
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| said by jdong:Unless the little company has a good legal force and can deal with a temporary halt of sales to pursue the infringement suit, like what happened to Buffalo (the router company, not sued by Microsoft though), it's likely cheaper to submit. Fair enough...
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garywk
join:2001-03-06
Clarkston, WA | reply to jdong
said by jdong:said by garywk:said by jdong:They won't be able to sell "infringing" devices here either. So, you figure these companies are having to sign NDA's as part of their agreements on what they're paying for so they can't release to the open source community just what patents they are alleged to have violated? If not, I don't see why they aren't saying just what's been "violated" as it's in their interest to make changes so the "violations" no longer exist and they no longer have to pay MS's tax. I suspect that said violations probably cover the core ideas of what they're doing, and it'd be far more expensive to attempt to "circumvent" the violations than to just play MS the money to stay away. As long as these companies don't have a strong moral attachment to the principles of FOSS (which frankly a lot of these kinds of companies don't care too much about, for better or for worse), this can be a reasonable approach. My point was, if they tell the open source community about the patent, the community itself will fix the problem even without their help(although it would be far better if they did help with the fix), and then, ergo, no longer are they infringing nor are they paying a MS tax....
It seems to me that greed alone ought to bring this idea to their minds. |
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jdongEat A Beaver, Save A Tree.Premium
join:2002-07-09
Rochester, MI
kudos:1 | said by garywk:My point was, if they tell the open source community about the patent, the community itself will fix the problem even without their help(although it would be far better if they did help with the fix), and then, ergo, no longer are they infringing nor are they paying a MS tax.... It seems to me that greed alone ought to bring this idea to their minds. Unfortunately I don't think the open source community is that magical about scratching commercial itches for free....
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El Quintron... a faint odor of kerosenePremium
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It's probably a matter of expediency more than anything. Why get into a fight if you can just run the M$-Tax as a "cost of doing business"
It wouldn't be the route I would take, but I'm not in business either.
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garywk
join:2001-03-06
Clarkston, WA | reply to jdong
said by jdong:said by garywk:My point was, if they tell the open source community about the patent, the community itself will fix the problem even without their help(although it would be far better if they did help with the fix), and then, ergo, no longer are they infringing nor are they paying a MS tax.... It seems to me that greed alone ought to bring this idea to their minds. Unfortunately I don't think the open source community is that magical about scratching commercial itches for free.... So, what you're telling me is that open source projects that rely on the same technology wouldn't re-write their code if they knew MS had patents that they could use against said projects? I find that hard to believe. That's at complete variance with Linus Torvalds assertions that the community would fix any patent violations if MS would only publish them.... |
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jdongEat A Beaver, Save A Tree.Premium
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Rochester, MI
kudos:1 | How have we fixed the FAT32 LFN patents? how have we fixed Android's multitouch patent violations?
How have we fixed H.264 or even MPEG4 ASP (DivX) patent violations in ffmpeg?
I'm not convinced it's possible to do in some cases, and in other cases there's any motivation to do so.
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 firephotoKDEPremium
join:2003-03-18
Brewster, WA
·Frontier Communi..
| The fix for FAT32 wasn't to be the same but to be compatible with those affected files. This change exists but perhaps it wasn't included in the mainline kernel?
quote:
The Linux developers have devised a way to bypass the Microsoft patent. By storing only the short-form, or only the long-form (but not both) on the FAT file system, the patent is bypassed. In this way, they are able to provide full native mainline Linux kernel support to all users for their FAT disks, and without having to pay royalties to Microsoft.
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