Great news! It doesn't matter what you do, someone has already got patents on 95% of your software.
Whether it's double clicking or tabbed palettes, or some other simple obvious concept, there are patents for it. Unless you want to recognise the validity of these and negotiate deals with their holders you can't make money off your software patent Microsoft charges large companies for using linux on a regular basis, and have always refused to say which patents are being infringed: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/29/microsoft_htc_linux_patents/ Because they won't say which patents they are, no one can code around it, so they can keep on trolling. Basically if you get big enough and IBM won't shield you with their patent war chest, then you're going to get taxed by Microsoft. But you will have to be very big for that to happen. Of course, if you're silly enough to try to undermine their income stream, then IBM will turn on you instead: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/04/ibm-breaks-oss-patent-promise-targets-mainframe-emulator.ars http://eupat.ffii.org/gasnu/ibm/ Or you can go down the Red Hat route and amass your own defensive portfolio: http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html Software patents suck unless you have great heaping stacks of them, or a friend with said overflowing box. Microsoft awards their employees with a little cube everytime they patent a resize control or close button that they attribute to that employee. Here is some dweeb with 31 of them: http://www.flickr.com/photos/erwyn/1831304624/ I know of a Microsoft employee who's built a tower with a hundred of the things on his desk. On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 10:22 AM, Nick HaC <[email protected]> wrote: > Bad news for our Kiwi cousins? > > http://www.nzcs.org.nz/news/blog.php?/archives/97-.html > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach > Australia mailing list. > > Guidelines on discussion: http://tr.im/ujKF > > No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself: http://tr.im/ujMm > > > To post to this group, send email to > [email protected] > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<silicon-beach-australia%[email protected]> > > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. Guidelines on discussion: http://tr.im/ujKF No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself: http://tr.im/ujMm To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en
