Comments on: Top Microsoft strategist highlights a change in IP policy

Microsoft has embarked on creating a brave new world of IP enforcement, which promises to be much scarier than the old world it replaces.

[stuxstu]

Have to disagree.. Protecting your intellectual property is important. It is the broad patents that are granted that are bad and where I agree on patent reform.

To many companies are stealing ideas from others. If you want to give your ideas away for free fine, but if if you choose to protect your investment that is also your right.

The TomTom suit was settled very fast and very much in Microsoft's favor.. I think it is pretty clear TomTom knew it had nothing to stand on... I am sure they could have hire an army of lawyers to fight Microsoft; as they are a multi-billion dollar company which removes the fear of Microsoft.

I will agree that Microsoft and Open-Source are headed for a confrontation over patents. My guess is they will come to a settlement, but it will favor Microsoft.

[Dalkorian]

Have to disagree .... I think it's pretty clear that TomTom knew that M$ could more easily afford a league of attorneys for a prolonged period of time, it would hurt M$'s business less. It was either pay up the extortion or go down fighting. I would have gone down fighting because I am quite stubborn when I'm enraged, but that's one of the primary reasons I don't own a business.
:-)

[hozelda]

>> To many companies are stealing ideas from others. If you want to give your ideas away for free fine, but if if you choose to protect your investment that is also your right.

This is what you remind me of:

http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-04-08-008-35-OS-CY-0002

You want to see what you gain and how valuable you are, but fail to see what you rob from society and how much you depend on it.

No man is an island, but a small number of the more savvy and unethical ones are leveraging an unconstitutional law because they can't compete and refuse to acknowledge that they just aren't that smart compared to the rest of the world. They leverage the many that don't patent (too busy creating) to then stick a government monopoly subsidy in everyone else's path.

Disgusting.

[hozelda]

Broad patents are natural for patents:

>> It is the broad patents that are granted that are bad and where I agree on patent reform.... To many companies are stealing ideas from others.

I would sympathize with you a little if you recognized that anything beyond a short monopoly period and only for "really innovative" inventions would be detrimental and unfair.

I've considered that we might allow a monopoly only until other independent creations came around, but all of this is ugly and likely not to be judged fairly.

Broad patents are unavoidable. Some are worse than others, but patent writers shoot for the broadest they can get. Fact is, tomorrow, you will know more than today and only then would be able to write a more narrow patent. By definition, then, the first to file are filing the broadest patents and these yield the greatest gains. Risk/reward is twisted.

Contrast with copyright. If you write a simple story about a dog and a cat, I don't violate your copyright if I take the idea further and develop it further, especially not if I only roughly approximated your story because I did not know about it very well. Well, copyright may also be a bit broken, but at least we can imagine how taking plots and other story attributes further would not violate copyright. Well patents work in the opposite way. That is their weakness.

Software engineering/science inventions:

That super power might be justified in some circumstances or it might at least be tolerable to society, but not for software when you have so many people that can participate/invent in the field of software because distribution, manufacturing/copying, etc, costs are basically $0 and the entire engineering design and initial manufacture can be done at $0 marginal beyond the cost of a cheap PC and where anyone in the world can collaborate also for roughly $0.

Key points to note for why software is different (or more problematic) than other engineering disciplines is the large number of participant-inventors, the lack of overhead costs to run the invention process/business, and how the grossly crude patent system of awarding so much power to so few can't, especially in this case (because of the large number of inventors), avoid stepping on many many toes and hence doing great harm to progress (to society). It's grossly unfair to give so few so many undeserved benefits (exclusivities and for so long) while simultaneously taking away these benefits/credit from so so many others.

Software patents completely misappropriate due credit, give the wrong people too much control, and then seal this mistake for 20 years.

In general about inventions:

Necessity is the mother of invention. When there is a need, we don't need to read patents. This is pretty much true. Many people can in fact come up with similar solutions (when generalized) when working mostly independently. This is true even when the problem is difficult (just peek inside a university classroom). It is not true for everything, but it is true for a great many things.

Patents are wrong solution to real problem:

We want to limit cases where a great invention is copied by a larger business who manages to keep most of the pie from what many would call the "inventors". That is an unfortunate situation, but patents are overkill. It is gathering too much power belonging to all members of society and putting it in too few hands despite that these hands are a very small part of the invention society, of the business society, of the other skills society. As implied above, this might be tolerable if few other inventors and businesses can and want to contribute (and maybe were contributing) around this particular invention, but the patent solution is generally overkill.

[ThePrairiePrankster]

Same old song and dance. It's all about maintaining the monopoly at all costs.

[alt117]

Matt, which happens more MS suing over patents, or people suing MS.

[dinnertime]

"Phelps berates patent trolls ..."

for the truth about trolls please see http://truereform.piausa.org

[TheAuthors]

Nice to get noticed, Matt. But we want to point out a few inconsistencies in your review:

You say:

?Phelps indicates that Microsoft cannot go it alone in the world...then points to statistics that claim 42 percent of the world's IT people depend upon Microsoft technology. Microsoft apparently has done quite well going it alone.?

What we say is that even the largest companies such as Microsoft, with the largest R&D budgets in the world, can NO LONGER go it alone anymore or hold all the pieces of their technological future in their own hands anymore because in today?s open innovation environment, technology innovation has become much more widely dispersed and heterogeneous.

Where?s the contradiction in that?

You say:

?Phelps berates patent trolls and others for forcing Microsoft to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing fees...but then goes on to explain how Microsoft's new IP strategy has his team on the road constantly signing up new licensees for patent royalties and other agreements.?

Nice bait and switch there between "royalties" and "other agreements." As we have indicated multiple times in the book, Microsoft's licensing income is a pittance compared to that of other large companies -- and probably less than 1% of what it is at IBM. The real reason for these licensing deals is to generate tangible business value through IP collaboration in new product development, etc.

What's more, in the first part of your review, even you noted that "[Phelps's] goal at Microsoft wasn't to generate cash through licensing." Now, if you don't believe that, then please cite evidence. But don't pretend that it's a stated fact that MS is raking in big licensing bucks when it's just not the case.

You say:

?If Microsoft's IP were needed to build such cooperative bridges, presumably more of these "partners" would be approaching Microsoft, rather than waiting for Microsoft's heavy knock on the door.?

What makes you think they don?t? We?ve signed over 500 collaboration deals with other firms, many of whom approached us -- as clearly indicated in the book.

You say:

?Phelps declares that the key point of his book is the "role that intellectual property can play in liberating previously untapped value in a company and opening up powerful new business opportunities." Unfortunately, he never explains why this new "collaboration imperative" is necessary, given that Microsoft's pre-patent offensive strategy netted it billions of dollars each quarter in free cash flow and a hugely impressive partner ecosystem.?

See the response above about the NEW distributed environment for technology development that now requires companies to collaborate.

Just to illustrate, our patent cross license and collaboration agreement with Nortel enabled us to jointly enter the unified communications space -- something neither of us could have done as effectively alone, given that Microsoft lacked enough telecom experience and Nortel lacked enough next-generation software expertise.

You say:

"In other words, the old Microsoft seemed to be doing quite well before Phelps made it an active patent tax collector. Will his new Microsoft fare as well?"

There you go again. The facts, repeatedly stated, are that Microsoft makes far less in patent royalties that most large IP holders around the world. In fact, it pays out orders of magnitude more than it ever earns in licensing income to license the IP of other firms.

It seems to us that there are many issues about which reasonable people might take issue with Microsoft.

Why then resort to attacking straw men in your review?

Signed,


Marshall Phelps & David Kline

[TheAuthors]

One more thing, Matt. We can understand you wanting to really stick it to Microsoft, but don't you think it's highly inappropriate to post your review on our Amazon book page pretending to be just another "customer" review?

There's a spot for editorial reviews, clearly marked. Customer reviews are supposed to be written by just that -- ordinary customers -- not journalists. And since we sent you the book gratis for editorial review, you can hardly portray yourself as an ordinary customer, now can you?

[jgeprogrammer]

I have not read the book nor will I ever read the book; Microsoft has ALWAYs tried to protray themselves as the good guys, but in reality???? Over the years I have seen Microsoft purchase their competitors, or steal others ideas and recreate them in their own light. Microsoft in my opinion plays nice with the right hand while beating you up with the left.

Its going to take years of consistancy and not look what we have done today aren't we nice.

[rickrowland]

I just saw MP on CSPAN books - I do think patents are a backward system - we need new approach to IP - witness what is happening with Music licensing or with any federal regulatory agencies - we need new thinking , if synergy is to be directed, otherwise we risk damning ourselves. There is still no substitute for hard-work and speed. I currently use open-office and I am sad or relieved to see the office monopoly broken. M$ must re-invent itself or go the way of WordStar.

[rickrowland]

I might say in addition I use 2 netbooks - one unix and one xp - the major change in computing has come - in addition to apple and now Pre - rr