Time for a cease-and-desist letter? [LWN.net]

Time for a cease-and-desist letter?

Posted May 14, 2007 6:19 UTC (Mon) by tavis (guest, #14187)
Parent article: Microsoft takes on the free world (CNN)

Now that Microsoft has a cross-licensing deal with Novell that has customers AND has made these comments, doesn't that show that their actions have caused harm to their competitors (e.g., RedHat, Canonical, etc.)? In which case, the allegations either should be substantiated or they amount to false advertising/slander of title/etc. So can't someone threaten MS that they need to substantiate the allegations and explain which 235 patents are being violated by what programs?

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Time for a cease-and-desist letter?

Posted May 14, 2007 7:01 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Nobody has this much money. The situation with patents sucks big way: you need a lot of money to fight even bogus patent - while patent owner can grind your business to a half meanwhile.

Can't afford to fight?

Posted May 14, 2007 7:57 UTC (Mon) by PO8 (guest, #41661) [Link]

…and this is where things get weird with free/open source software. US and multinational businesses (primarily Linux distributors, but also some of the for-profit and non-profit foundations involved in application development) can't just ignore the US patents and keep cranking out software without a court fight. However, much free software is still developed by an international community of dedicated individuals with no financial stake in their creations. Short of shutting down the Internet, I don't see how you keep them from continuing to do that.

If you're looking for an analogy, witness the US fight to prevent the development and dissemination of software supporting strong encryption. Screwed a few US businesses up some, and was ultimately entirely futile. There are obvious differences between the crypto wars and the current situation, but the current situation is even less like a fight between two traditional companies (e.g. the IBM v SCO battle).

I don't think this is just a clearcut fight like biz-vs-biz would be. If the war is on, it will be a strange, strange war.

Time for a cease-and-desist letter?

Posted May 15, 2007 3:00 UTC (Tue) by tavis (guest, #14187) [Link]

I'm not suggesting fighting all 235 patents. The point of a cease-and-desist letter would be to force M$ to either tell us what the patents are or to shut up. The FSF and other legal groups (e.g., SFLC) don't necessarily have a business to grind to a halt; or, they could do it on behalf of a developer. They could claim harm by saying that their client's protected speech (of sharing his/her code with DB/Credit Suisse/etc.) has been threatened. Hmm, maybe someone should ask them.....