Open Source Blog

"Patents are hard to understand. You have to have a certain level of expertise to understand the scope. And there are legitimate questions about patent quality. The reality is that you'd have to look at thousands of patents and thousands of products. To focus on every single one would be prohibitive."
David Kaefer, Microsoft patent attorney, rules out detailing alleged patent violations, Computerworld, 21 November.

"Microsoft and Novell have agreed to disagree on whether certain open source offerings infringe Microsoft patents and whether certain Microsoft offerings infringe Novell patents."

"We at Microsoft respect Novell's point of view on the patent issue, even while we respectfully take a different view. Novell is absolutely right in stating that it did not admit or acknowledge any patent problems as part of entering into the patent collaboration agreement. At Microsoft we undertook our own analysis of our patent portfolio and concluded that it was necessary and important to create a patent covenant for customers of these products. We are gratified that such a solution is now in place."
Microsoft statement, 20 November.

"We've had an issue, a problem that we've had to confront, which is because of the way the GPL works, and because open-source Linux does not come from a company - Linux comes from the community - the fact that that product uses our patented intellectual property is a problem for our shareholders."

"And we agreed on a, we call it an IP bridge, essentially an arrangement under which they pay us some money for the right to tell the customer that anybody who uses SUSE Linux is appropriately covered. There will be no patent issues. They've appropriately compensated Microsoft for our intellectual property, which is important to us. 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."

"Only a customer who has SUSE Linux actually has paid properly for the use of intellectual property from Microsoft."
Steve Ballmer, Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) summit, 16 November.

"We don't believe it's constructive to identify specific products and start labeling them as infringing when responsible companies show an ability to manage patent issues privately."
David Kaefer, Microsoft patent attorney, Wall Street Journal et al, 16 November.

"If a customer says, 'Look, do we have liability for the use of your patented work?' Essentially, If you're using non-SUSE Linux, then I'd say the answer is yes. I suspect that [customers] will take that issue up with their distributor," Ballmer said. Or if customers are considering doing a direct download of a non-SUSE Linux version, "they'll think twice about that."
Steve Ballmer, eWeek, 3 November.

“We’ve struck a deal under which we can provide patent agreements to Linux customers in which Microsoft’s intellectual property is respected, and we are appropriately compensated for the use of our intellectual property.”
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft/Novell press conference, 2 November.

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