Microsoft Word banned
Written on August 26, 2009 at 9:50 pm, by Lupo
Two weeks ago a US federal court ordered Microsoft to pay nearly $300 million for patent infringement and banned the sales of one of their flagship products, Ms Word*. This makes me smile…
Lets remember that until the mid 90s this people (I mean Microsoft) and particularly Bill Gates spoke against software patents and warned that patents could bring innovation to a standstill and wipe out smaller firms (most programmers still believe this). In fact, Microsoft had only relied on copyright and not patents until 1991. And yet, in 1994 they were the “only” software company to advocate for software patents at a hearing with the US Patent and Trademark Office.
So why did they change their mind? Well, in 1998 some light was shed on this issue when an internal document outlining strategies relating to Open Source software was leaked to Eric S. Raymond**. This document not only admitted that Open Source and Linux in particular were seen as a major threat, but also proposed a number of strategies to disrupt their development.
