The OpenDocument Format (ODF) Alliance today cautioned that serious deficiencies in Microsoft’s support for ODF needed to be addressed to ensure greater interoperability with other ODF-supporting software.
ODF Alliance Tests Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 ODF Support - Finds Serious Shortcomings
The ODF Alliance has prepared a Fact Sheet [PDF; also available as text on their website, if you scroll down] for governments and others interested in how Microsoft’s SP2 for Office 2007 handles ODF. The ODF Allliance says their testing revealed “serious shortcomings that, left unaddressed, would break the open standards based interoperability that the marketplace, especially governments, is demanding”. The Fact Sheet itemizes the major problems testing revealed. Marino Marcich, managing director of ODF Alliance, points to one huge shortcoming:
“For example, even the most basic spreadsheet functions, such as adding the numbers contained in two cells, were simply stripped in an ODF file when opened and re-saved in Microsoft Office 2007. A document created in one ODF-supporting application, when re-saved in Microsoft Office 2007, rendered differently – missing bullets, page numbers, charts and other objects, changed fonts – making collaboration on an ODF file with Office 2007 very difficult. Indeed, some of the so-called ‘plug-ins’ were revealed to provide better support for ODF than the recently released Microsoft Office 2007 SP2. This is no way to achieve the interoperability around ODF that the marketplace is demanding.”
For those who think that only the ODF Alliance was disappointed with Microsoft’s work, here are some more new examples of opposition. Rob Weir from IBM writes:
Last year, when I was socializing the idea of creating the OASIS ODF Interoperability and Conformance TC, I gave a presentation I called “ODF Interoperability: The Price of Success”. The observation was that standards that fail never need to deal with interoperability. The creation of test suites, convening of multi-vendor interoperability workshops and plugfests is a sign of a successful standard, one which is implemented by many vendors, one which is adopted by many users, one which has vendor-neutral venues for testing implementations and iteratively refining the standard itself.
[...]
The pretty words have been shown to be hollow words. Microsoft has not enabled choice. Their implementation is not robust. They have, in effect, taken your ODF document, written by you by your choice in an interoperable format, with demonstrated interoperability among several implementations, and corrupted it, without your knowledge or consent.
Once again they did it. Microsoft is telling the world that they are improving interoperability across existing office formats and applications thanks to their native support for the ODF file format, a leading office file format based on existing ISO standards. But it could not be further from the truth.
Microsoft are actually killing ODF, like the digital nazis that they are. Kissinger is proud of their spiritual sons.
What kind of white phosphorus are they using ?
First they don’t write to ODF but to a canada dry version that we shall call MS-ODF, a variant filled with countless exploding mines, thrown from the air like any coward would do. Namely they are implanting the proprietary Excel formula syntax right inside files expecting the ODF formula syntax as exposed by all the ODF compatible applications out there. Since formulas are used in many elements such as charts, conditional formattings and so on, it wrecks any serious spreadsheet.
While Microsoft Office 2007’s latest service pack purports ODF support, it’s not complete, nor does it appear designed to provide usable interoperabilty with other ODF-capable applications.
For users of MS Office who need better compatibility, the solution is the Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office:
* The Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office gives users of Microsoft Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint the ability to read, edit and save to the ISO-standard Open Document Format (ODF).
* The plugin works with Microsoft Office 2007 (Service Pack 1 or higher), Microsoft Office 2003, XP and Microsoft Office 2000.
Jeremy Allison (Google) denounces Microsoft too, despite being one who works with Microsoft on so-called “interoperability” (Microsoft promised to assist Samba):
Yet Microsoft Office SP2 claims to have a fully compliant version of ODF, and that’s probably true, as defined by the specification. It’s just completely useless at interoperating with other vendors products. This is not interoperability, it’s an attack on the very concept.
“Microsoft is already propagating fluffy press releases about “interoperability”. It talks about ODF, so maybe they try to drown out the many critics.”Microsoft is already propagating fluffy press releases about “interoperability”. It talks about ODF, so maybe they try to drown out the many critics. Matthew Broersmaparroted Microsoft at ZDNet and Elizabeth Montalbano, who is focused on Microsoft at IDG, did the same thing. This means that the real news about Microsoft destroying interoperability will be washed away by its PR. Microsoft employees and their partners twitter in harmony about a Patrick Durusau writing a letter on MSODF. He has not been reliable ever since his trip to Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
As someone who is close to the process (Jomar Silva) put it (in two parts), “Microsoft is always supported by independent consultants (as Patrick Durusau, Rick Jelliffee, and Alex Brown)… Strange, isn’t it ? [...] If the[ir] partners supports them, ok, but always being supported by the same group of independent folks is, at least, weird.”
As most of you already know, I spent the month of October in a marathon of speeches about ODF. During the marathon, I had the opportunity to attend some presentations about Microsoft Interoperability and would like to share with you here some information about that cool experience (the post is long but worth a read).
The first opportunity to see our friends from Redmond featuring the theme was at the rally held by them at the end of Latinoware 2008. I do not call that a presentation, because they did not allow questions from the audience, as a rally. Luckily the audience was not that big and I was on that room just be able to “write the facts” about the speech.
Another notorious Microsoft booster, Wouter van Vugt, is prodding the Microsoft line. They all pretend to be innocent, as though they are the poor victim in forking of ODF. They mess about with ODF while smiling and pretending nothing they do is ever wrong. As Microsoft’s Vice President Jim Allchin once explained it, “We need to slaughter Novell before they get stronger….If you’re going to kill someone, there isn’t much reason to get all worked up about it and angry. You just pull the trigger. Any discussions beforehand are a waste of time. We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger.” To twist this quote a little, Microsoft realises that it needs to slaughter ODF before it gets stronger….If they are going to kill something, there isn’t much reason to get all worked up about it and angry. They just pull the trigger. Any discussions beforehand are a waste of time. Microsoft needs to smile at ODF while it pulls the trigger. █
IN its top-secret presentations, Microsoft explains what "schmoozing" is. It’s a subversive and disingenuous strategy for causing harm to one’s rival. Here is a transcription of the Neelie Kroes press conference where she admitted Ballmer having schmoozed her in her hometown. It came up in a Q&A session whose transcript is the only source on the Net, the wire services (& tech publications that quoted them) which had paraphrased the fact.
Neelie Kroes: When the court ruling was published, we got in touch, and Mr. Ballmer and I found each other in a small restaurant, so to say, there it all started, nobody could find out where, or whatever, and there we were indeed promising each other that there should be a compliance of what has to be done much earlier.
18:13 (Antonio)
Q: I hope Microsoft paid the bill in the restaurant (laughter), but my question is on the fine. You may not have decided yet on the amount you may impose, if any, to Microsoft but please try to help us just avoid any present misinterpretation,miscalculation. What is, as of yesterday, the highest level of amount you can impose on Microsoft?
Neelie Kroes: I will be back with the news when we have taken that decision. Absolutely. I mentioned already today that anyhow — and that is a certainty, and there are not that many certainties in life, as you aware –that from today on, there is no reason to impose further penalties on Microsoft as of this Monday, the 22nd.
In 2006, Ballmer and Commissioner Kroes had been negotiating for some time and she had clearly thought there would be progress, until the day Ballmer suddenly published her e-mail correspondence on the Microsoft PressPass site without her consent, claiming “transparency”. She hit the ceiling and it was downhill for Microsoft from there.
“She hit the ceiling and it was downhill for Microsoft from there.”Ballmer had already annoyed her by making an unannounced visit and press conference around the corner from her office in Brussels in January (see coverage here and also here). He also held a secret meeting that day with Commissioner Viviane Reding, noted on her Web site agenda and picked up by one of the wire services, but no one connected those dots. That meeting was completely missed by the press, but Bloomberg may have had some coverage at the time.
The secret restaurant date with Commissioner Kroes in October 2007 was really damage control — she agreed to end the daily fines, but withheld what the actual daily fine amount would be. This was later announced in February 2008, the very day Microsoft was in Geneva helping to ram through OOXML [1, 2]. She was crystal clear that at least two other investigations of Microsoft were underway, a fact overlooked by the totality of the mainstream and tech press who generally reported the latest browser tying statement of objections as a “new” investigation. █
A FEW DAYS AGO, Bradley Kuhn explained why Microsoft is unlikely to be really interested in open source. In fact, at the beginning of this month, Microsoft unleashed a press release that explicitly insulted open source for bearing higher TCO (it’s Gartner-speak by the way) than Microsoft’s proprietary technology. How can this two-faced approach stand?
Well, Microsoft appoints all sorts of people who pretend to live in an entirely different universe, from which they deceive the competition. One of these people is Sam Ramji, to whom SDTimes gave the soapbox a few days ago (SDTimes belongs to or is affiliated with IDG [1, 2], of which it is a member). In response to this deceptive article, which came across as though it was just parroting Microsoft on open source, the same publication released this rebuttal that echoes Bradley Kuhn.
The number of lines of code Microsoft has given back to the community is tiny compared to other software companies of the same size, he said. “Microsoft has made tiny contributions under BSD-style licenses and is making big noise about giving code back. They are making a mountain out of a molehill. Sam’s job is to put a clean face on Microsoft’s involvement with free and open-source software, and to make the community feel that they are giving back.”
Sam Ramji, whom we mentioned in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11], does not even have any real background in Free software. The closest he got to it was Software as a Service (SaaS). Lack of experience can be an excuse for imposed ignorance. Further, states the article:
Kuhn’s biggest point of contention is that Microsoft is still refusing to participate with the General Public License (GPL), the most widely used open-source license. “They basically have the opposite position of every other company involved with open-source software,” he noted.
Kuhn also dismissed Microsoft’s work with the Samba project as being nothing more than a consequence of court-ordered mandates.
This never prevented Microsoft from pretending that they love Samba and complied due to the goodness of their hearts. We must all rememberthe truth though. █
“Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer [...] I can’t imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business. I’m an American; I believe in the American way, I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don’t think we’ve done enough education of policymakers to understand the threat.”
–Jim Allchin, President of Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft
Despite Fedora's decision to avoid Novell's Moonlight, this software might make it into Debian repositories some time in the future. “It’s clear why,” says one reader. “Fedora serves Red Hat’s interests and Red Hat is vulnerable to a patent attack. But Debian — in practice — isn’t.”
In correspondence with this reader we found out that in the earlier days the Samba project, developers were in a rather similar situation, in which NT was the underdog, so they were actively endorsed by Microsoft. “When NT displaced traditional Unices, this endorsement ceased, and in the end they even embraced the GPLv3,” says our reader. It’s important to remember that Java is currently the leader. So, Microsoft might want to ‘pull a CIFS‘ on it.
“I wonder if we’re about to see a repetition of history? Makes me think of the historical “Rome does not pay traitors,”” says the reader.
That’s an interesting point because based on my recollection, Samba used to attend some conferences or lesser formal events where Microsoft collaborated with them. It’s a bit like documentation and conferences where Microsoft, Moonlight and Mono stand together united.
Anyway, back to Samba: At a later stage, according to what Samba told the European Commission, Microsoft stopped attending conferences or inviting Samba over for collaborations. I can find the references if required, and I think it was Andrew Tridgell — not Jeremy Allison — who attested to this experience. Needless to say, Samba was upset at Microsoft for this. At a later stage, Jeremy Allison told an online radio show, FLOSS Weekly, that he had heard Microsoft tells its programmers to “f*ck with Samba”.
Perhaps Samba was too much of a risk, being an enabler of lower-cost competition which was — and still is — more stable and reliable (Microsoft prefers using the word “dependable” sometimes). That was before Christmas of 2007 when things changed due to pressure from the EU (as well as Piana et al, Eben Moglen at the SFLC and so on).
To summarise, the commonality here is that Microsoft helps some people make its protocols prevalent on rival platforms. When it becomes a de facto standard at a more universal level, then it’s all about RAND and begging for information.
Microsoft wants volunteers who lead it to API domination. Then, Microsoft can knock them out of the way.
It’s important to bear in mind that Microsoft was at first afraid of Mono, according to Miguel de Icaza (interview circa 2004). It didn’t let them become an integral part of technical Microsoft conferences, so Mono meetings were held across the road.
Microsoft must have had its Eureka moment later. In 2008, Miguel had his own Eureka moment, when he realised that Microsoft was sort of betraying him with those licensing entanglements Novell had agreed to. Samba was not so gullible in comparison. It protested against Novell even before the deal with Microsoft was signed (and immediately after). Some of Samba’s developers left Novell in protest [1, 2]. █
[Note: some of the claims made here may be out of date, but the principles remain valid.]
“Interoperability” has become a weasel word. The word is regularly used to insinuate that two (or more) computer systems should work very well, but they usually work well for the wrong reasons. The method adopted to make these systems work is flawed. This approach monetizes something that should be free and something which typically requires no research and development whatsoever. It is an unfortunate case where the role of standards is being ignored and replaced.
When discussing interoperability between products, restrictive conditions such as patents and licensing agreements are often kept out of sight. In a similar fashion, when discussing software patents, their controversial nature is typically concealed under an ‘umbrella’ called “intellectual property”. This leads to unnecessary confusion and has software patents honored in countries where such patents are fundamentally against the law.
Eyes on Europe
A couple of months ago in Europe, an agreement was announced between the European Commission, spearheaded by Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes, and Microsoft, which had just lost its antitrust appeal. The agreement embraced a route to further saturation in the server market, but rather than insisting on the use of standards, it seems to have drifted in another direction, which involved interoperability rather than open standards.
But Wait! What About Samba and the GNU GPL?
The agreement in Europe might stifle competition rather than spur any. It does not appeal to Free software developers and it is intrinsically incompatible with the most widely used software license in the world (GNU General Public License). This essentially leaves out in the cold what Microsoft has considered its #1 threat for many years.
“With the European Commission’s agreement, a great concern arises.”
The Samba project, which is GPL-licensed, enables several operating systems to interact with Microsoft Windows. Windows is ubiquitous, so this is essential. Protocols for file and printer sharing, for instance, are very prevalent in a form that designed by Microsoft many years ago. None of this design was standardized or published openly, so reverse-engineering work was needed to bridge a critical gap. This made Free software, such as GNU/Linux, more viable in the enterprise.
With the European Commission’s agreement, a great concern arises. Suddenly, reverse-engineering endeavours that so many people rely on can be made subjected to the wrath of software patents (and thus royalties). Ironically enough, Europe itself does not honor software patents, yet it seems to have blindly accepted what Microsoft insists on. There is a great danger here — the danger of letting standards be neglected and crucial consensus be decentralized.
Let us look at the importance of standards and then return to the issue at hand. This issue is unlikely to go away unless the European Commission changes its mind and its decision, thereby acknowledging its misunderstandings.
Why Are Standards Important?
In a world where diverse mixtures of technologies exist, products need to communicate. They need to interact with one another in order to handle complex tasks and for users to achieve their goals. The consensus has usually been that in order for products to communicate, industry leaders and field experts should convene and agree on a set of rules. They should agree on a single uniform method (or a set thereof) that will enable products to cooperate with one another. This is what standards are all about.
“By adhering to standards, communication with other products can be assured. ”Companies have plenty or reasons to like standards. Universal standards make development much easier and they facilitate integration with other technologies. By adhering to standards, communication with other products can be assured. Rather than test and design ‘bridges’ (or ‘translators’, or lossy ‘converters’) for each pair or products, design can be matched to a written, publically-available and static standard. It makes life easier for both software development companies and companies that consume technology, i.e. those that actually use the products and whose requirements matter the most.
What happens, however, when one company deviates from the standard in pursuit of more control? Capitalization is dependent upon the ability to show that something unique is being offered. Standards, nevertheless, are about uniformity, not about being unique. Therefore, companies that want a greater level of control over customers are more likely to ignore standards, but the situation is not quite so simple.
In order to ignore a standard, it takes a lot of aggression. It also requires a market share large enough to abolish or at least fight against the standard, which is backed by many parties, not one. With monopoly control, standards are pretty much defined by the monopolist. They can be changed and extended at any time without causing much interference. However, such use of power can also push rival companies off the cliff. At the end of the day, this hurts consumers who are left without choice and have little control over pricing and upgrade pace.
The Symbiotic Relationship Between Standards and Openness
Free open source software enjoys a good resemblance to the notion of free and open standards. Both are available for viewing and they encourage participation. Free open source software tends to embrace standards for a plethora or reasons. Proprietary software, on the other hand, does not expose its underlying behaviour. Quite often, its value lies in behaviour that is hidden. The software protects (in the ownership sense) certain knowledge, so transparency is neither an option nor a priority.
Standards play a role in prevention of vendor lock-in. They facilitate choice and they encourage greater diversity in the market. Adversity to standards is not only motivated by financial value that can be found in restriction on choice, i.e. imprisoning the customer. It is also motivated by the ability to extract revenue directly from competitors. That is where software patents and so-called “intellectual monopolies” serve as a dangerous new element to keep on eye on. They have become a curious phenomenon in the software world because they are fearsome to many and beneficial to very few.
Patents Meet Free Standards and Free Software
In Europe, Microsoft has essentially managed to collect a trophy for snubbing standards all these years. Its lawyers turned a loss in the court into a small victory. In an antitrust exhibit extracted from the previous decade, Microsoft revealed its intent to ignore standardization bodies at all costs.
“In an antitrust exhibit extracted from the previous decade, Microsoft revealed its intent to ignore standardization bodies at all costs.”
“We are large enough that this can work,” an internal document from Microsoft stated. This was said after the following eye-opening statement: “We [Microsoft] want to own these standards, so we should not participate in standards groups.” From the Halloween Documents, whose existence and authenticity was confirmed last year, it is revealed that Microsoft planned to “innovate above standard protocols” to deny entry of Free open source software projects into the market.
Having made a de facto standard so common and having defended its existence, all Microsoft needed was a reservation of rights to demand payments from competitors. Samba distributors and users are arguably bound by a promise which the European Commission specifies in its agreement with Microsoft. Other than the cost of obtaining documentation, there are patent royalties to be considered.
Reflections and Ways to Proceed
The decision which was made by the European Commission seems to have been a poor one. For starters, interoperability was chosen as the route to compliance, all at the expense of open standards. Moreover, based on the Commission’s own assessment, an interoperability route was needed merely because “trivial and pointless” extensions were added on top of existing standards, in order to stifle adoption of competing products. The Commission’s accusations and blame align poorly with its decision, which is discriminatory — if not exclusionary at best — towards Free open source software.
In conclusion, one must remember that open standards must never be conceded and replaced by a void promise of interoperability, which is incompatible with everything that standards and Free open source software stand for. Numerous parties have therefore protested and have already urged the European Commission to reconsider and revise its decision. █
s we emphasised yesterday, Microsoft’s plan for ‘interoperability’ excludes the GNU GPL, by design. In essence, this is achieved using what Microsoft proudly calls “licensing”, which requires payments for the use of protocols that have become very prevalent. The issue at hand was also described in the following short blog post from yesterday.
After Microsoft went public with its patent licensing specs the other day, I took a closer look at the agreements you have to sign — and the cash you have to fork over. To license patents from any one Microsoft product, you need to pay $10,000 up front, no questions asked, on top of per-copy-sold duties for your product.
It’s about what I expected from Microsoft. Good on them that they allow you to peruse and make use of the protocols without charge if you just want to work with them privately and not develop something that’s going to be released to others. But everything outside of that requires payment — and that $10K entry dues per Microsoft product is a great way to keep all of the noncommercial open source players out of the game.
Most observers are likely believe that people in Europe are unaffected by this because software patents have no merit, but Microsoft plays this game in a US-centric way, as illustrated by the Samba story, especially last year [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. Moreover, Charlie McCreevy has plans for what they call “harmonisation” (a very deceiving and cheeky word). His involvement is further described in this new article from IAM Magazine.
And alongside a Community patent we need a single European patent jurisdiction through which we can end the current patchwork of often contradictory decisions in patent cases handed down by national courts. On top of this, just three years ago the Commission was telling us that we needed a Computer Implemented Inventions directive to harmonise the treatment of software patents, again to help SMEs and to provide certainty in the software market. In short, the Commission tells us that patents are good and patents are vital to Europe’s prosperity.
[...]
So, a go-getting and smart European SME may well have invested significant time and money in developing world-class software. It may have followed the advice of commissioners McCreevy and Verheugen to get patent protection, but when it comes to putting that software into a potentially lucrative pan-European project, it’s no can do.
Jonathan Zuck, president of the Association for Competitive Technology, said the EU scored an own goal with the document. “It aims to facilitate digital cooperation among European administrations, but in effect it excludes many well-established technologies from being used for e-Government services due to a narrow definition of open standards.”
[PJ: Yup. The BSA and CompTIA are riding agin. Yippee-ki-yi-ay, it's a range war, and here comes the pr machine, and along with them dutifully ride some of the media. "The software industry" is expressing concerns? IP is being "sacrificed"? Or is it some fronts for Microsoft expressing concern? Take your pick. I'm pretty sure Red Hat isn't complaining, and they are part of the software industry, after all. And not even all the members of these organizations wish to be represented this way. Remember last summer in Australia when CompTIA claimed its members were for OOXML and IBM was stood up and said it was a member of CompTIA and it was opposed? So, CompTIA speaks for *some of its members* who I guess would rather have others speak for them. I seriously doubt IBM is worrying about the EIC or open standards. You can read the final draft of the EIC here and more about it here.]
We also wrote yesterday about WIPO yesterday, so you may wish to keep an eye on articles like this one. There’s a lot of mystery around WIPO’s plans.
The fact that the WIPO patent committee has decided to request the International Bureau studies on “exceptions from patentable subject matter and limitations to the rights, inter alia research exemption and compulsory licenses” and “patents and standards” is testament that the WIPO of 2008 is not the WIPO that invoked “Intellectual Property as a Power tool for Development”.
Here below is the Annex to the Summary by the Chair which lists the eighteen non-exhaustive list of issues for further elaboration and discussion in the future. This list includes such topics as “Economic impact of the patent system, Alternative models for innovation, Patents and health (including exhaustion, the Doha Declaration and other WTO instruments, patent landscaping) and Relation of patents with other public policy issues.”
In summary, as is hopefully demonstrated here, there’s a great push from several different fronts for software patents in Europe. Without software patents, Microsoft’s dream of taxing Free software are doomed to fail. It’s an important battle to fight and important developments to keep abreast of. █
Turn competitor into own cash cow, make it more expensive and thus less desirable
We haven’t sufficient time to write about this in great depth at the moment, but there are various developments in Europe which readers ought to know about. These affect handling of software patents, Free software, and open standards.
Over in the IRC channel, we were told a little while earlier: “ECIS confirmed this morning that Microsoft appeals to the ECJ on patents. this is big news because all the press says they appeal on the “fine”, but in fact they just want certainty to tax Samba and Redhat.” This information is based on private talks with ECIS.
Microsoft sucks 8,136,000 EUR each year out of the European Commission
Commission pays Microsoft each year 226EUR for its office infrastructure. Commission has approx 36,000 users. Make the math. Commission makes also “open” tenders which prefers Microsoft products.
In the news you are also likely to find some coverage of the talk from Neelie Kroes. The New York Times, which is biased, picks a rather strong headline: E.U. Snubs Microsoft on Office Systems
Ms. Kroes has fought bitterly with Microsoft over the past four years, accusing the U.S. software giant of defying her orders and fining the company nearly $2.68 billion for violating European competition rules. But the speech was her strongest recommendation yet to jettison Microsoft products, which are based on proprietary standards, and to use rival operating systems to run computers.
“I know a smart business decision when I see one — choosing open standards is a very smart business decision indeed,” Ms. Kroes told a conference in Brussels. “No citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to choose a closed technology over an open one.”
You can find the speech here and you can also find a less critical (or moderate) article here.
The EU’s top antitrust official on Tuesday called for governments to favor open-source software for their own use, taking aim at Microsoft Corp. for ‘locking in’ customers to their proprietary technology.
EICTA, the industry body representing the information and communications technology and consumer electronics industries in the European Union announces that Erkki Ormala has been elected as President and Chairman of the Executive Board. Dr. Ormala is Vice President, Technology and Trade Policy of Nokia Corporation where his responsibilities cover political, regulatory, economic, market access and other business environment related issues. The main Eicta policy issues are in his area of responsibility at Nokia. He takes over from Rudy Provoost, who led the organization for the past four years.
Another change in the European patent system was published or at least highlighted by Digital Majority yesterday.
The council of ministers in Belgium has decided last 23rd of May to proceed with the ratification of the London Agreement, in order to scrap the requirement for translations of patents granted in Belgium in Flemish.
A patent war erupted between the two companies last year after HP filed patent suits against Acer accusing the Taiwanese PC vendor of infringing on at least 10 HP patents and sought to block Acer PC imports to the U.S.
The justices unanimously said LG could not enforce its memory-technology patents against both Intel and the computer makers that install Intel’s chips in their machines. The judges said LG’s power to extract royalties was “exhausted” by its licensing agreement with Intel, of the United States.
Justice Thomas delivered the Supreme Court’s 19–page unanimous decision that provides some new life to the doctrine of patent exhaustion. The opinion reverses the Federal Circuit and holds that under the exhaustion doctrine applies to the authorized sale of components that “substantially embody” a process patent. Here, Intel’s authorized sale of chip components to Quanta exhausted LGE’s patent rights.
Lastly, there’s the WiMAX patent pool, which made a lot of headlines. What would be the impact on Free software?
Six big technology companies are spearheading a plan to jointly license patents that cover the wireless technology called WiMAX hoping to limit royalty rates that could deter customers from using it.
The participants are Cisco Systems Inc., Intel Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., Sprint Nextel Corp., Alcatel-Lucent and Clearwire Corp., according to people familiar with the situation and a document outlining the group’s plans.
They have scheduled a conference call Monday to announce an organization, the Open Patent Alliance, to gather rights to WiMAX-related patents and license them to makers of computers, networking devices and other products, these people said.
Software patents may not be going away so fast. It is very important to ensure that they stay (or get eliminated) in the very few places where these are seen as valid at the moment. █
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A couple of months ago in Europe, an agreement was announced between the European Commission, spearheaded by Commissioner for Competition 
