<div dir="ltr">Geoff<br><br>Let's not mix the FOSS movement, politics, emotion or opinion with economics.<br><br><br>The simple economics are that for the entire software industry - the cost of software patents far outweighs the economic benefit unlike the pharmaceutical industry.<br>
<br>The cost == cost of writing, issuing, enforcing<br>The benefit == increased revenue to the company<br><br><br>d<br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 1:38 PM, geoffrey mendelson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:geoffreymendelson@gmail.com">geoffreymendelson@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="im"><br>
On Aug 13, 2009, at 1:14 PM, Shachar Shemesh wrote:<br>
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Where has Microsoft's junk patents given them any money? Unless they are using extortion (possible) to quietly threaten potential FOSS defecties away, that is. They are not selling those, and they have never sued anyone (well, one). It also seems that not many are taking their threats too seriously - we did not exactly see the FOSS world grind to a halt, after all.<br>
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If they are not making much money off their silly patents, and they are losing, then their loses outweight their gains.<br>
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Or in plain English, you can't.<br>
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>From the USPTO website:<br>
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Searching US Patent Collection...<br>
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Results of Search in US Patent Collection db for:<br>
AN/microsoft: 12062 patents.<br>
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You are claiming that with 12062 patents since 1976 assigned to Microsoft, the ones that are software related have netted them a total of zero or lost them money.<br>
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Your are also discounting the the fact that people did not compete due to patent protection which may be in the end more valuable than licensing fees.<br>
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You are also went from claiming software patents to "junk patents". Define "junk patent" and explain how the term applies to all, as you did, software patents.<br>
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The FOSS world exists not because of there are no software patents, it exists because people have dedicated their work to the public domain, which is a very different thing. IBM has dedicated many of their patents to the public domain because they are a hardware marketing company, and as the old IBM addage says "nothing sells hardware better and faster than software".<div>
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Geoff.<br>
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-- <br>
geoffrey mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM<br>
Jerusalem Israel <a href="mailto:geoffreymendelson@gmail.com" target="_blank">geoffreymendelson@gmail.com</a><br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Danny Lieberman<br>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>Protect your data: <a href="http://www.software.co.il">http://www.software.co.il</a><br>
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