Re: [Patents] Re: Pseudo-Patent-Free Microsoft Standard

[Bernard Lang <Bernard.Lang@inria.fr>]

On Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 10:02:57AM +0200, PILCH Hartmut wrote:
> > (Microsoft just can't cope with the idea that standards are
> > supposed to be used by everyone.  So they are hooking up
> > their patents via their license.  We simply can't turn our
> > back on them for one second.  -- Seth Johnson)
> > 
> > http://www.advogato.org/article/453.html
> 
> The CIFS specification seems to be based on two trivial and broad
> problem patents from the early 90s which cover all communication
> between 2 computers where data are directly stored from a remote
> location into the data buffer of a program and the transmission
> doesn't use headers.
> 
> These claims look so ludicrous that there is hope that they would not
> stand a court proceding.  If you can afford litigation, the result
> might well be that the court narrows down the claim scope somewhat but
> yet upholds some of the subclaims.  I guess that would be enough for
> MS to maintain its grip on the proprietary standard which it is
> pushing onto the Net.
> 
> Here are some of the details:

..........

> Unfortunately we still do not know about the EPO situation concerning
> these Microsoft applications.  As usual, the US patent doesn't contain
> information on a parallel EP or WO patent application.  Yet these
> could very well exist.   In 1993 the EPO was already granting patents
> on the most abstract mathematical methods, and of course the above
> claim language looked "technical" enough for the EPO to consider it
> not pertaining to a programming solution as such -- indeed it is more
> a problem than a solution that is claimed.  Also, an application from
> 1993 would most likely have been granted around 1998 by the EPO.
> 
> For research into this, you may want to use
> 
>         http://www.depatisnet.de/
>         http://www.espacenet.com/
>         http://www.delphion.com/
>
> Using a few key words from the two US applications (such as Microsoft,
> "inventor"'s name, text strings from the claims etc) should get you
> there.

I do not know whether that is essential, though proper information
never hurts.

The data below seems more important to me, because it shows a
systematic attack based on interoperability, using existing hold on
the market to extend to new areas.  Very precisely what anti-trust
regulation forbids.

Can someone translate precisely the excerpt from Heise 

Auf die Ãffnung des .NET-Framework
angesprochen, kündigte Ballmer an, dass es
sicherlich eine
Common-Language-Runtime-Implementation für
Unix geben werde, schränkte diese Entwicklung
jedoch als Subset ein, der "nur für den
akademischen Einsatz gedacht sei". Ãberlegungen
zur Unterstützung freier .NET-Implementationen
wie Mono erteilte Ballmer eine Absage 

"Wir haben so viele Millionen in .NET gesteckt,
wir haben so viele Patente auf .NET, die wir
pflegen wollen." 

Reference:
  Steve Ballmer: Kein Tänzchen an der Leine
  Detlef Borchers, Heise online, 12.03.2002
  http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-12.03.02-000/
  
http://www.heise.de/bin/nt.print/newsticker/data/jk-12.03.02-000/?id=bb59a8c6&todo=print


Bernard

PS Are there other speeches by Ballmer or others with similar statements ?
   especially use of patents to kill open source.


> As MS is using these swpats for its crusades against the GPL, We need
> to document this stuff quickly and thouroughly, see also
> 
>         http://swpat.ffii.org/news/index.en.html#m023E
> 
> and some help would be very much appreciated.
> 
> -- 
> Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608  
>  
> Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation             
> http://swpat.ffii.org/
> 100,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/

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