MS .Net patent--a threat to standards? (ZDNet) [LWN.net]

Microsoft is in the process of applying for a wide-ranging patent that covers a variety of functions related to its .Net initiative, say this ZDNet article. "If approved as is, the patent would cover application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow actions related to accessing the network, handling Extensible Markup Language (XML), and managing data from multiple sources. APIs are the hooks in software that allow applications to work with another system."

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MS .Net patent--a threat to standards? (ZDNet)

Posted Feb 11, 2003 19:19 UTC (Tue) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link]

This really shouldn't be a surprise. Microsoft resissted the internet for as long as it could and then did a 180 when it became obvious they couldn't hold networking captive. This is just another attempt to own the whole networking pie, and its equally doomed to failure. Microsoft has yet to figure out that there is far too much vested interest against their gaining exclusive control. Individuals, companies and foreign countries all have very strong motivation to work against them in this. That doesn't seem to stop them from trying though. I think the theory is people will eventually get tired and they'll win. Dumb theory, there is too much money at stake for that to be even remotely probable.

MS .Net patent--a threat to standards? (ZDNet)

Posted Feb 11, 2003 19:50 UTC (Tue) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

I love it. Patent APIs that access the network. Brilliant. Prior art on that one is a no-brainer. And the beauty is, at this point, the prior art is so old that even if that prior art were patented once, it wouldn't be any more. Of course, I suspect that won't stop judges appointed by legislators purchased by Microsoft from letting Microsoft get a lot of mileage out of it. (Disclaimer: I'm basing my "prior art" statement on the quote that LWN extracted.)

Microsoft needs to get slapped down, hard, on this one. (Personally, I think the anti-trust trial should have ended with Microsoft being shut down and all of the assets being sold off to pay employees below the excutive level a year's worth of severance pay, but that's just me.) (The employees at executive and higher level, meanwhile, should have been jailed.)

If only there were any hope, any hope whatsoever, that our stupid government would stop allowing software and business method patents, this wouldn't even be an issue. Alas, we're so far down the garden path that there's no turning back.

One day there will be a revolution and a rational system will take over. In the mean time, we get to live with an insane system.

-Rob

MS .Net patent--a threat to standards? (ZDNet)

Posted Feb 11, 2003 22:02 UTC (Tue) by jwharmanny (guest, #971) [Link] (1 responses)

How could they ever be able to patent XML technology? It wasn't even invented by Microsoft. And XML is in use all over the world nowadays. How can someone ever patent that? And if they succeed, do they then have the right to sue the whole world for not paying them enough royalties?

It would be like patenting windows, or words. Wouldn't be surprising if they managed to patent those.

About the .NET technology: most of its innovations were borrowed from J2EE, XML, and C/C++. Microsoft invented neither of them.

MS .Net patent--a threat to standards? (ZDNet)

Posted Feb 13, 2003 4:30 UTC (Thu) by Strike (guest, #861) [Link]

You mean like this? :)

MS .Net patent--a threat to standards? (ZDNet)

Posted Feb 12, 2003 0:22 UTC (Wed) by rickfdd (subscriber, #4519) [Link]

Today for patents the margin of innovation is vanishingly small.
The patent office doesn't care. It collects fees and lets
the courts decie. There is no disincentive.

The recent Eldred supreme court ruling made mention of the
dichotomy between ideas and expressions, where the latter is
the domain of copyrights. The Microsoft patent claims
listing the class functions reeks of copyright protection
not patent, but I like that even less because copyright
currently lasts 95 years and grows at the rate time passes.

Unfortunately, copyright extension is the pet issue
of the mass media. My local paper The Chicago Tribune
even prints factual inaccuracies in its editorials for
copyright extension. The founding fathers realized this
unique failing of democracy, and included a constitutional
clause of "limited times", but apparently that wasn't enough.
The supreme court justices make millions on their book
contracts.

Today copyright covers everything written and all their derivative
works. How could a free standard ever have happened?

Defensive? (What's defensive, anyway, in context?)

Posted Feb 12, 2003 8:24 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

This article didn't mention the defensive aspect specifically, as another I was
reading did, but did include the following:

<quote>
By submitting the application, which was filed last year and made public last
week, Microsoft is following the lead of other major tech companies that have
aggressively pursued patents over the years. [...] IBM is the most prolific patent
generator, topping the list of corporate patent awards for the last 10 years.
</quote>

The other article made the point that increasingly, corporations, even those like
Red Hat, are adding to their patent portfolios, in ordered to remain "in the game"
so to speak. It gives them bargaining chips to x-license with, when some other
company thinks about threatening them with a patent violation suit. The big
patent holding companies are pretty much all x-licensed anyway, and this
continues and extends the x-license system, making it hard for the little guy,
ALONE, to do much, as he won't have an entire block of potentially x-licensable
patents to negotiate with, backing him up.

With IBM, the most prolific patent generator, as pointed out above, throwing its
weight so critically behind support of open source (Linux and software libre in
general) in many areas, HP, another large patent block holder, making more $$
than anyone else including IBM off of Linux/software-libre, at this point, and RH
actively creating its own "defensive" patent portfolio, MS may well feel it has no
choice but to do likewise -- the very existance of the company may depend upon
its future ability to continue to negotiate x-licenses from all these companies now
so visibly (and probably menacingly, from the MS perspective) supporting
software libre, and that can only be ensured if it has its own substancial portfolio
around to x-license. Viewed in that light, "defensive" certainly takes on an entirely
new meaning, one which if practiced zealously by MS, with their recent "anything
but software libre" type licenses, could easily be a major headache for software
libre as well.

It's quite possible that in the future, patent block holding companies will have to
"sponsor" what are now independant developers, in much the same way rich
patrons of old supported the arts, or, possibly, more comparable to the way
various mob affiliates sponsored/protected companies under their influence, "for a
price." Coming under the sponsorship of such a large patent block holding
company would ensure that the developer's interests were protected as far as IP
infringment threats, as the IP block holder would manage the x-licensing issues
for said developer, while independent developers on anything but very small
projects would cease to exist, for the most part, due to the threat of being sued
out of existance. Sponsoring conglomerates could therefore be viewed as
"friendly and supportive", but only as long as you played by their set of rules, and
paid whatever they demanded, so they could and would be viewed as a threat, as
well.

Under such a scenario, folks could continue to chose a basic atmosphere to align
with, the free(er) RH "sponsorship", potentially free/proprietary neutral
sponsorship of someone like IBM or HP, or more proprietary sponsorship of
someone like MS. Of course, as part of the price extracted for that protection, the
"sponsor" of choice would demand the right to patent and negotiate licenses for
anything their stable of developers came up with, to strengthen their defensive
position against the others, and keep up the fight, all the while strengthening their
hold on their developer stable at the same time.

Thus, "software libre" in name may continue, along with its opposition by
"software proprietare'", even while the spirit of true "software libre" dies. Whether
that's a better alternative than simple surrender to the forces of "software
proprietare'" remains debatable, but that's the scenario we may ultimately face.

Microsoft is patenting INTEROPERATION

Posted Feb 12, 2003 13:14 UTC (Wed) by NZheretic (guest, #409) [Link]

Microsoft's CEOs have made it "patently" clear that they intend to restrict competing .Net implementations by cultivating Microsoft's patents, such as United States Patent Application #20020059425 "Distributed computing services platform" which covers the design and inter-operation of .NET based implementations.
Although there is prior art examples of individual technologies such as the JVM etc, Microsoft patents such as the one mentioned, define and claim the interoperation of the components, in such a way that any re-implementations will be sure to be covered by the patents. This remains true even for the Microsoft specs submited to standard.

Mono also implements parts of .NET that have NOT been submitted to ECMA and ISO standards. Those parts of Mono lack even the protection for IP infringement with re-implementation that ISO documentation licensing implies.

In comparison, Sun has granted the Apache and all open source developers FULL access to the specs, test kits and granted the full rights to develop competing products under the JSPA . Sun has also fully opened up the Java development standards process under the new Java Community Process (JCP) . Even to the point of granting full open source re-implentations of J2EE such as JBoss ...

JBoss received the green light last week, after Sun told ComputerWire that it would allow all of the APIs contained in J2EE 1.4 to be open sourced. Fleury had expressed concern that certain critical APIs, including Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) 2.1, would be not be made available to open source organizations.
However, Java Community Process director Onno Kluyt said: "Sun's plan with 1.4 is that although it started before JCP 2.5, by the time it ships it will allow the creation of independent implementations. I don't think the APIs are that interesting, because the license that sits on top of J2EE will allow that [independent implementations]".

There those that claim that .NET is open to re-implementation, but until Microsoft make a simliar public legal declaration to Sun's JSPA, any .NET re-implementation represents a pending legal mindfield.

MS .Net patent--a threat to standards? (ZDNet)

Posted Feb 12, 2003 15:45 UTC (Wed) by ttraub (guest, #2950) [Link]

Probably a headlock on the .NET API by Microsoft would limit .NET's acceptance outside of MS-only shops. Does anyone really believe that a Merryll Lynch or a Fidelity with thousands of Sun servers is going to say, "OK let's go buy a bunch of big, reliable Win2K boxes so we can switch to .NET!" It's just not going to happen. More likely is that Linux boxen will replace the sparcs, and people will go with an open standard, if not .NET then J2EE. This is my prediction... but I've been wrong before (just look at my stocks :-(
-Terry

MS .Net patent--a threat to standards? In europe?

Posted Feb 12, 2003 23:50 UTC (Wed) by dps (guest, #5725) [Link]

Do you know of a filing date in the EU? If the answer is not yet then there will be *no* EU patent, because by now MS has throughly disclosed the .NET API and theerefore there can be no patent. Also copyright is useless because APIs are explicitly not subject to copyrgiht.

AFAIK the US is the only place you can get a patent after disclosure. All you can do in the US is exclude your own publications from what counts as "obvious", so the odds fo get US patent should be minimal (all the non-MS books on .NET shoudl constitute evidence that the content of the parent is "obvious" and therefore not patentable).

I hope .NET catches on when mono is usabe, because that way we might have no problem answering the "what about <whatever> softtware on linux" question.