Microsoft conducted two patent attacks on Linux in a week

Last week, many media outlets wrote about Microsoft's wonderful open source initiatives — SQL Server Announcement for Linux , OS release for Debian-based network devices (in fact, this is a repetition of old news ), and joining the Eclipse Foundation .

Accidentally or not, these events have overshadowed themselves and ignored other Microsoft initiatives that do not look so charming at all. This is an agreement with Acer to preinstall Microsoft software under the threat of a patent lawsuit, as well as an attempt to patent the technology that is already implemented in Ubuntu. "Microsoft loves Linux so much that it will strangle patent claims to death, while the media doesn’t pay attention, but instead they say that Microsoft is now" friendly "with GNU / Linux,” commented TechRights.

It is known that thanks to patents, Microsoft has turned Android into its “cash cow” and annually receives about $ 3 billion from 74 manufacturers of Android devices, Samsung alone pays Microsoft a billion dollars a year . HTC, General Dynamics, Wistron, Onkyo, Acer, ViewSonic and many others pay Microsoft $ 5-10 per Android device sold . Under the threat of litigation, manufacturers who produce Android devices, agree to the conditions of Microsoft, including the pre-installation of Microsoft programs on their smartphones and tablets, as happened last week with Acer .
')
The Redmond corporation has been trying to turn around the same scheme with Linux since 2006 (patent lawsuit against Novell). Lawsuits are traditionally held behind closed doors, and transactions are concluded on the terms of the NDA.

“This is extortion,” said Mark Shuttleworth (founder of Canonical) a few years ago, “and we must call a spade a spade ... We cannot be drawn into this game.” Later he also said: “Microsoft demands to pay them for patents, but does not say which ones. If a guy walks into a store and says, "This is a dangerous area, why don't you pay me 20 bucks and I guarantee that everything will be fine," that’s illegal. This is racket.

The situation is aggravated by the fact that Microsoft does not hesitate to borrow ideas from GNU / Linux (in this case, from Ubuntu) and to patent them, posing as their inventions. Now Microsoft has filed a patent application for Continuum technology for the convergence of a smartphone with peripherals — a monitor, keyboard, mouse — wirelessly, as in Ubuntu Phone. It remains only to hope that the patent office will detect the presence of prior art. Otherwise, there will be another weapon in the Microsoft portfolio to blackmail the developers of devices for Linux.

Actually, the rest of the patents from the Microsoft portfolio are about the same plan. Despite the deals under the terms of the NDA, in 2011, the list of Android patents that Microsoft filed against Barnes & Nobles hit the open access list . Android tablet maker Nook. Microsoft lawyers then stated that their company owns more than 60 thousand patents. However, directly for this case, they presented ten pieces.

• US Patent No. 5,778,372 (“Patent 372”) entitled “ Remotely Retrieving and Managing the Display of an Electronic Document with Embedded Images” (pictures in the browser), points 1 and 5 are against Nook and Nook Color
• US Patent No. 5,889,522 (“Patent 522”) entitled “Managing child windows in the system” (tabs in windows), paragraphs 1, 2 and 12 are against Nook Color
• U.S. Patent No. 6,891,551 (“Patent 551”) entitled “Selecting elements in the process of editing electronic documents” (click with the mouse or click on the touchscreen to select a text fragment, after which the highlighted fragment is highlighted), paragraphs 1-3, 5 and 7- 11 against Nook and Nook Color
• US Patent No. 6,957,233 (“Patent 233”) entitled “Method and Apparatus for Obtaining and Rendering Annotations for Unchangeable Electronic Content”, paragraphs 21 and 22 are against Nook Color
• US Patent No. 6,339,780 (“Patent 780”) entitled “Download Status in a Limited-Display Hypermedia Browser” (Normal Download Status, Scalable), paragraphs 1-6, 9-14, 17-26 and 29-42 against Nook
• US Patent No. 5,579,517 (“Patent 517”) entitled “Name System for Long and Short File Names”, paragraph 1 filed against the Nook
• U.S. Patent No. 5,652,913 (“Patent 913”) entitled “System for providing intercommunication factors of I / O access in common data structures with shared file system and device driver,” paragraph 23 is against Nook
• U.S. Patent No. 5,758,352 (“Patent 352”) entitled “Name System for Long and Short File Names”, specific items not presented
• US Patent No. 6,791,536 (“Patent 536”) entitled “Simulating Gestures on a Control Device Using a Stylus and Getting Feedback”, paragraph 14 filed against the Nook
• U.S. Patent No. 6,897,853 (“Patent 853”) entitled “High-Level Active Input Matrix for GUI”, paragraph 7 is against Nook

All these patents are considered by Barnes & Nobles to be “trivial, both in terms of commercial importance and in terms of suitability for patenting.” Specialists of the company give a detailed commentary on each of the patents. For example, in the case of the “patent 372” for downloading images in a web browser, they are reminiscent of the existence of the Netscape Navigator 2.0b3 browser, where it was implemented (prior art). In the case of the “patent 522” on tabs in the operating system, they give an example of the OS / 2 2.0 programming manual, which describes such tabs. Annotations for electronic documents from “patent 233” are described two years earlier (1997) in the Adobe Acrobat Software User’s Guide. And so on for the rest of the patents.

But tactics bring effect.

Last week, Microsoft updated the license agreement with Wistron, under which it is obliged to make deductions from each tablet, smartphone, e-reader or other device running Android or Chrome OS. Such transactions not only bring additional profits to Microsoft without much effort, but also artificially increase the cost of gadgets with the OS on the Linux kernel.

Microsoft leads patent litigation through a subsidiary of Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC, which operates in the best traditions of patent trolls. Last week another patent cross-licensing agreement was announced , this time with the Japanese company Rakuten Inc. The terms of the transaction are confidential, but it affects “Linux and Android devices”.

At the same time, the mainstream media continues to write about “new Microsoft”, which is friends with Linux , almost without mentioning Microsoft’s massive attack on GNU / Linux with patent lawsuits.

Regarding the latest Microsoft open source initiatives, including the release of SQL Server under Linux, TechRights writes : “In court, Microsoft insists that Linux is its intellectual property. Now it behaves as if Linux is its property. ”