For Those That Use MSN Messenger

[Bluce Ree]

I would say that some things in the world of software should be patentable. One example would be security protocols. Another would be something like EAS. And it has been a good thing for Android that EAS is out there and unlike Apple MS licenses it at a reasonable cost. A number of Open Source mail servers use it and in fact Google itself licensed EAS and put it in Android starting with Ice Cream Sandwich. Before then the smart Android OEMs licensed it and baked it into their "skins" (like HTC with Sense).

But I do agree that there are big issues in software patents. One is indeed as you said - overly general patents. Another is lack of determining prior art (that actually is a big problem in the entire technology patent world).

As a hard core developer and one who has developed some very advanced, high-performance telecom-related algorithms, I completely disagree with software patents. EAS is nothing clever. It's an XML-based API (submit -> response) used to synchronize data between Exchange and your application. Big deal. MS put out Exchange then has the balls to license access to its text-based protocol by 3rd party apps for interop. Yeah, how innovative. Any junior developer with tcpdump or ngrep could figure out that protocol with little effort.

About the closest thing in the software universe I could possibly consider an invention is something like RSA (public key encryption), but even that is a stretch. RSA-style public key encryption is based on generating large prime numbers. Fortunately, the process of generating large prime numbers, which would seem to qualify for patents, wasn't patented because RSA would have been in trouble.

Patents on security protocols prevent interoperability. I agree with copyright on the implementation method (the actual code) but stifling interop is simply a means to lock out competitors.

OpenOffice is available under LGPL, which makes it compatible with proprietary code. There is nothing to stop Microsoft from contributing code to it, for example, then asserting patents on code it contributed later. Nothing in LGPLv3 protects the work from being poisoned with patents by a patent-holder who can then turn around and assert those patents at a later time. MS has already tried to assert patents on OpenOffice in the past to extort licensing from Sun. Fortunately, Sun was able to counter with its own portfolio, claiming a large variety of patent violations in .NET as related to Java.

Microsoft is, without a doubt, abusing its patents. In 2007, Microsoft claimed open source software violated 235 of its patents without giving any specific details as to which patents. The claims were 42 in the Linux kernel, 65 in the Linux UIs, 45 in OpenOffice and 83 more in various open source projects. It has, so far, quietly accomplished what SCO was unable to do, getting licensed from large-scale corporate users of Linux. For example, it managed to extort licensing from Amazon for its use of Linux.

Sometimes, it's cheaper to just pay the mob protection money than to try fighting it. AFAIK, there is no clear remedy in law against frivolous patents. So, just pay the piper seems cheaper in the end.