Study: Microsoft patents could threaten Linux

[Zombie9920]

Could Microsoft

[hm_murdock]

The problem is that these days, you're allowed to patent vague concepts and ideas and not just tangible things.

If you had to patent CODE... things would be different.

Things would be different if I ran things.

[flap]

Well the whole purpose of patents is to cover ideas and concepts, and not tangible things. There wouldn't be any need to patent specific code since that's covered by copyright.

[Aloone_Jonez]

For patent to hold water it must be innovative and original, for example if I managed to patent a normal bog standard broom it wouldn't hold up in court as people have used brooms for many years. But if I patented a new light weight fold up broom that would as if by magic by the flick of a switch fold up into a foot-long easy carry case then that would be worthy of a patent. Since MS has yet to patent anything that is innovative I think we have nothing to worry about.

We should be more concerned about HP, Intel, Novel.
 

quote:
JimmyJames:
The problem is that these days, you're allowed to patent vague concepts and ideas and not just tangible things.

Yes, I agree the patent system needs to change, it was origionaly there to protect people's ideas not fat monopoly's.

 

quote:
JimmyJames:
 Things would be different if I ran things.

    No doubt they would be!

[flap]

quote:For patent to hold water it must be innovative and original

Unfortunately that isn't the case, especially not with software. Software Patents would be bad enough even if they were only granted for 'novel' ideas, but the situation is made worse by the fact that such trivial, obvious ideas can be and are patented.

 

quote:Since MS has yet to patent anything that is innovative I think we have nothing to worry about.

The point of the article is that there are specific patents held by Microsoft and others that are already potentially infringed upon by Linux.

[insomnia]

quote:Originally posted by Viper:
Could Microsoft

[WMD]

Off the top of my head, I know that MS has a patent on "grouping taskbar buttons" - meaning, if you have multiple windows of one app loaded, they would become a single menu-like entry on the taskbar.  MS apparently filed for this in 2000, but didn't release that until XP in Oct. 2001.  KDE 2.2 introduced this a month earlier than that.  Who knows who has rights to that one...

[Aloone_Jonez]

quote:
Flap:
Unfortunately that isn't the case, especially not with software. Software Patents would be bad enough even if they were only granted for 'novel' ideas, but the situation is made worse by the fact that such trivial, obvious ideas can be and are patented.

Even if a blatantly obvious idea were patented, it wouldn