12.18.07
The Patent Circus in Pictures
TrollTracker has posted a nice and comprehensive item which contains figures that make you cringe at the sight/state of the patent system.
The New York Times Magazine published their 7th Annual Year in Ideas issue on 12/9/07. Their tradition is to feature interesting patents of the last year on the endpage of the magazine. Given that ’tis the season for top ten lists, here are my top ten silly patents of 2007, culled from the list in the NYT mag.
Watch the figures. You won’t regret it.
In other news, XM Satellite got sued for an outrageous amount of money before settling with a ’small and shy’ inventor you might recognise as Universal Music.
The original lawsuit, filed in New York federal court, had accused XM Satellite of “massive wholesale infringement” and sought $150,000 in damages for every song copied by XM customers using the Inno, which went on sale last year.
Microsoft too has just been sued for copyright violations.
But it’s complicated because the wire reports Microsoft Philippines bought licences to print the manual back in 2004.
This seems like a case of trolling, but make of it what you will. █
Related articles:
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.