Rhialto wrote:
On Sat 09 Jul 2011 at 19:34:35 +1000, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
That's not how patents work. There's no requirement for actual lines
of code written by Microsoft to appear in the product to be a patent
infringement.
That is exactly what makes patents evil. In effect, software patents
monopolize thoughts. Parallel invention is very common in the software
world, and patents don't recognize that fact.
I'm not going to argue against that, because I happen to believe that
software patents are harmful myself (or at the very least, software
patents should last much less time than hardware patents). Nevertheless,
the fact is that software patents do exist in law, and Microsoft would
be doing themselves and their shareholders a disservice if they didn't
use them both to defend themselves against patent trolls and to increase
revenue.
In other words: Microsoft is not behaving badly, for a corporation.
--
Steven
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