Microsoft Brings Back the Patent Story

The old OSRM study claiming Linux might break more than 200 software patents were brought back in the spotlight by Microsoft and things kind of started to cause a stir on the Internet in the past few days. Now that the patents-storm has settled down for a while let's see what it was all about.

Everything started in 2004 when OSRM launched the results of a study on patent violations in Linux. When Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, quoted those results in a statement, things went out of control and took such amplitude that some people even started talking of lawsuits against Linux. But things were soon to be forgotten by everyone. Well, not exactly everyone, as Microsoft surely did not. In fact, Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, happened to just remember it during a Fortune interview. Do I have to tell you about how this affected the public opinion again? Just give it a Google search using "Microsoft" and "patents" for keywords and you'll see it for yourselves. Now, the company is sending out a press release trying to explain this.

"The company's longstanding preference is to license rather than litigate and Microsoft's work over the past three years to build a bridge with open source is a result of that commitment. The November agreement with Novell addresses the IP issues in open source while meeting both the distributor's needs and, more importantly, the needs of the customer…" Microsoft officials stated.

As Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols was making a good note in one of his latest articles, Microsoft's record regarding patents litigation revealed a different position than the one coming out of the statement. Unfortunately for Microsoft, some of the trials did not end as expected. See for example the Eolas case, where it had to deal with a $521 million patent infringement ruling over how Internet Explorer handled embedded content. Richard Fontana, counsel for the Software Freedom Law Center, working with the Free Software Foundation too, also noted:

" …(Microsoft) refuses to identify specific patents or explain how they're being infringed, lest FOSS advocates start filing challenges to them. In other words, Microsoft is afraid of identifying any of these 235 patents because if they did, the free/open-source software community would be able to prove that the patents are invalid, or unenforceable, or that FOSS does not, in fact, infringe the claims of those patents."

Novell, on the other hand, tries not to get involved in this scandal. Novell's officials have stated that the company maintains its initial position, that their agreement with Microsoft does not represent any acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property.