On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 05:02:36PM +0200, Paulo Pinto wrote: > On Thursday, 12 April 2012 at 13:36:41 UTC, Jeff Nowakowski wrote: [...] > >Microsoft has also in recent years been very aggressive with their > >patent portfolio, rattling their saber at Linux and suing Android > >distributors. > > And yet IBM still is the number one champion in patents. > > Or just, because they play nice most of the time with open source they > are excused? > > Patents are bad, regardless which company makes use of them.
All big companies are guilty of patent squatting. I distrust all of them. The bottomline is, once a company grows big enough, it acquires all sorts of vested interests in making more money, and retaining its position to be able to do so. Patent squatting is especially popular among contemporary high-tech companies. They essentially have no choice because they have to answer to their stakeholders. Only startups and grassroots companies have the chance of being decent in this respect. T -- I think the conspiracy theorists are out to get us...