Posted on 03/30/2012 6:55:59 PM PDT by Halfmanhalfamazing
Apparently, Torvalds stepped into the arena and helped convince an ITC Administrative LAW Judge named Theodore R. Essex that Microsofts patent in question was invalid. The same judge who determined that Motorola had violated four Microsoft patents, including one known simply as the 352 patent. That particular patent has to do with storing filenames with a lot of characters in old file systems like Windows FAT.
Torvalds told the judge that Motorola had found the posting he had made about long filenames used in a compatible manner with short filenames, and that post predated the Microsoft patent by three years. Torvalds made a video deposition with Microsoft lawyers who tried to cast doubt on the newsgroup postings Motorola and Torvalds said was used rather than the 352 patent. If that patent were ruled to be invalid, Microsoft would lose some of the licensing fees it has been choking out of competitors. We are watching this one with popcorn in hand.
(Excerpt) Read more at slashgear.com ...
there’s a cult leader for every preference!
Nah. Linux/OSS cultists follow Stallman. In the linux world, when people talk about ‘cooler heads’ prevailing........ that’s Torvalds.
noted.
I'm not necessarily a fan (not an obsessive one, anyway) of msft. I am, however, quite committed to the idea of protection of intellectual property rights.
If Torvalds prevails, and collects a settlement from microsoft (which he probably will one way or another), will the trade press run an\ correction stating that "Microsoft has been choking [licensing fees] out of it's competitors on behalf of Linus Torvalds"?
Bump!
That’s an interesting way of looking at it.
I don’t think we’ll see headlines along those lines though. :-)
Sounds like Torvalds has already prevailed. He will not collect a settlement from Microsoft, but he has made a good point.
I would think that since Linux was released as open source that there is a good chance that Microsoft will be refunding the fees that they collected and nothing will go to Linus.
The cool head who would be appreciated at FR would be Eric Raymond. He is the author of “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”. Eric is the nemesis of Stallman since he honors intellectual property and believes in a free market.
I heard Eric speak at a Java users group in Scottsdale, Arizona about 10 years ago. His background is anthropology and he is a very interesting speaker.
Wikipedia has an article summarizing “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” with a link at the bottom to the full essay:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar
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