My Word!
 

SD will excommunicate me for that title!

Microsoft ordered to stop selling Word - ZDNet.co.uk

I think it says more about the US patents system than anything else.

SD

The phrase "Only in America" springs to mind :rolleyes:

Next thing you know they'll be categorising all copies of MS Word as ILLEGAL,
and anyone that own / uses it will be an Accessory to the crime :ugh:

No where did I file that download of OpenOffice ;)

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d1.../Coconutty.jpg

I suspect Microsoft will respond in one of two ways - it will either try to buy i4i or it will pressurise big clients of i4i to drop them.

1) Software patents damage everyone and only benefit patent trolls.

2) The US patent system is badly broken

:(

Mac

Let's not forget the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, where the number of patent cases has risen 20-fold since 2003 because of the District's perceived bias towards patent trolls.

How so? If you'd read the Patent i4i has conceived a useful idea, worked it through to viability, proved it commercially - then Microsoft nicked it.

The fine is exactly what the Patents system is for.

I think Microsoft took on the wrong company there, i4i have some powerful backers.

Patents on mechanical things are OK

Patents on software, which is essentially the expression of an idea, are not appropriate - software is in any case perfectly adequately covered by copyright.

So many "ideas" or scraps of knowledge, logical processes or semantic conventions are now "patented" that it is impossible to write anything more than the most trivial application without infringing someone's "patent". If you write software, do an exhaustive patent search for anything you may have infringed (and accept the viability of each patent) you will find that you have "infringed" hundreds, if not thousands of "patents" - because the vast majority are so vague that almost anything could infringe them or so trivial that there is "prior art" going back to Gutenberg and beyond.

Imagine in John Boyd Dunlop had been able to patent the IDEA of using rubber in tyres to cushion road-shock. Imagine if the Wright brothers had patented the flying machine, the CONCEPT of heavier than air flight or Coanda the objective of the jet engine. Etc.

Patents are designed to protect inventions, not concepts and computer programs are well and adequately covered by copyright.

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. I feel certain that some large company will patent some obvious thing related to interface, object orientation, algorithm, application extension or other crucial technique. If we assume this company has no need of any of our patents then the have a 17-year right to take as much of our profits as they want."

Bill Gates on patents in 1991

:ok:

Mac

Bill Gates.

.......... and then it got worse - for Bill.

For applications filed on or after June 8, 1995, the patent term is 20 years from the filing date of the earliest U.S. application to which priority is claimed (excluding provisional applications).

Mac, I tend to agree with you on pure software - and particularly 'plant' patents.