Weird Things Going Around this World…
Another year of law suits and settlements has gone by. Latest is the settlement of Microsoft with SPX/Imagexpo for patent #5206934, “Method and apparatus for interactive computer conferencing”. It costs dear Microsoft some $60 million bucks. With that even more ridiculous lawsuit between Microsoft and Eolas for a patent involving embedding a program object inside a browser still pending, it’s not hard to guess what will happen with an enough stupid jury.
And while all this wasn’t really happening a few months ago, I was laughing my ass off on knoppix.com, reading the back-out explanation:
“This can lead to the termination of many software projects such as KNOPPIX, at least within Europe, because the holders of the over 30,000 already granted “software patents” (currently without a legal foundation) can claim exclusive rights and collect license fees for trivial things like “progress bars”, “mouseclicks on online order forms”, “scrolling within a window” and similar.” Now, I’m not laughing so hard anymore.