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Novell, buyer's remorse, and the patent threatNovell, buyer's remorse, and the patent threatPosted Nov 22, 2006 10:47 UTC (Wed) by mitchskin (subscriber, #32405)Parent article: Novell, buyer's remorse, and the patent threat
In a sense you could say anybody who has got Linux in their data center today sort of has an undisclosed balance sheet liability, because it's not just Microsoft patents.The "undisclosed balance sheet liability" thing is aimed right at CEOs and CFOs, who (since Sarbanes-Oxley) have to personally certify their company's financial reports. Pretty scary FUD.
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Novell, buyer's remorse, and the patent threat Posted Nov 22, 2006 17:07 UTC (Wed) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link] Given the current state of software patents (as several of the above posters have pointed out), anybody who has _any_ software in their data center today has that same "undisclosed balance sheet liability", because it's not just Microsoft's patents.
(I was going to say "any software less than 20 years old" because any older patents have expired -- but the silliness of today's patent situation has allowed for patents to be issued on concepts that have been floating around since the early days of OS/360, Multics, etc., and the courts don't seem readily disposed to summarily dismissing a patent suit against software that was around before the patent was filed. Strange world when a patent holder can sue prior art for infringing.)
With the SOX liability this may encourage outsourcing all one's datacenter operations to managed services companies; redirect the patent trolls to the likes of IBM, HP, et al.
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