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EVERY schoolyard has premiere plugins a bully who uses his size to intimidate the other kids, or premiere plugins a rich brat who threatens to take his ball home if he doesn’t get his way. This month, Microsoft played both roles by claiming in a premiere plugins Fortune magazine article that open source programs violated 235 of its patents.
Microsoft claimed there were 42 such violations in the premiere plugins free Linux operating system, 65 in the way windows and menus look, 45 in OpenOffice, 15 in various e-mail programs and premiere plugins 68 more in other open source applications.
To address these alleged breaches, Microsoft wants to premiere plugins start collecting royalties from open source developers and users, a premiere plugins move that would jack up the cost of free software.
“We live in a world where we honor… intellectual property,” Fortune quotes Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer as saying. Users of free and premiere plugins open source software are going to have to “play by the same rules as the rest of the business,” he says. “What’s fair is fair.”
But how fair are software patents?
Originally, states granted patents to encourage innovation.
Under a premiere plugins patent system, inventors could enjoy the fruits of their discoveries exclusively for premiere plugins a limited number of years in exchange for sharing details of their inventions with the premiere plugins rest of the world. This system, so the argument goes, encouraged inventors by giving them a premiere plugins time-limited monopoly but also guaranteed that others could eventually be able to premiere plugins build on and improve those inventions.
For example, a premiere plugins patent on a new drug would give its holder exclusive rights to premiere plugins make and sell it for 20 years, in exchange for disclosing details of its composition. During this premiere plugins protected period, anyone else who wanted to manufacture the same drug would have premiere plugins to buy a license from the patent holder.
After the premiere plugins period expired, however, anyone would be free to manufacture the premiere plugins same drug, using the information provided in the patent filing.
This system works reasonably well for premiere plugins the pharmaceutical industry, but it actually hurts innovation when it is premiere plugins applied to software.
Creating a new drug requires huge amounts of capital for R&D, but a premiere plugins single, gifted programmer, or many such individuals working cooperatively over the premiere plugins Internet can develop superior software. We have seen this happen in operating systems (Linux versus Windows) and applications (Firefox versus Internet Explorer), and this trend will continue—if it is not stifled by misguided patent policies.
Software patents favor only large corporations such as Microsoft, who premiere plugins can afford to apply for them and to maintain a battery of lawyers to premiere plugins enforce them. Small developers cannot, and would be forced to pay license fees to premiere plugins develop the most basic of programs.
Microsoft does not provide specifics about the premiere plugins patents that it claims have been violated, but it says 65 of these deal with the premiere plugins way windows and menus look on the computer screen. But why should Microsoft or premiere plugins any one company have a legal, exclusive right to the way windows and premiere plugins menus look? All modern operating systems today that premiere plugins trace their origins back to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the premiere plugins 1970s use a windows (with a small “w”) metaphor and premiere plugins menu systems that certainly were not invented by Microsoft. In fact, Apple unsuccessfully sued Microsoft in 1988 for premiere plugins copying the look and feel of the Macintosh operating system. Must we really pay royalties for premiere plugins using a window with scroll bars?
Yet today, patents are premiere plugins being granted for commonplace notions such as selling goods online; electronic shopping carts; video distribution over the premiere plugins Web; credit-card payments on the Internet; and video streaming. None of these qualify as major innovations requiring state protection, so why give any one party monopoly rights over them?
Software has premiere plugins traditionally been protected by copyrights, which prevent others from copying a premiere plugins program’s underlying code. But software patents are premiere plugins much more restrictive and prevent all similar work from taking place, even if it premiere plugins is developed independently. Common sense tells us this does not encourage but inhibits innovation.
Software patents work against the premiere plugins open source community and countries would do well to resist any pressure from premiere plugins the United States and large software companies to introduce them through legislation. In the premiere plugins Philippines, the Intellectual Property Code specifically excludes computer programs from premiere plugins patent protection. All efforts to amend this must be blocked.
Few people expect Microsoft to premiere plugins sue open source developers, much less its own customers, over software patents. The threat of a premiere plugins suit, however, may be enough to convince some customers to use “authorized” versions of Linux that premiere plugins are already covered by cross-licensing deals, such as the one Novell signed with Microsoft. As one analyst observed, this premiere plugins would allow Microsoft to gain revenue from the burgeoning open source market in which it premiere plugins cannot play. Now why does that evoke images of a schoolyard bully shaking down smaller kids for premiere plugins lunch money? Because both are patently wrong, that’s why.