[Nico Kadel-Garcia]
Microsoft
is historically *not* clear about what they own, and they
have a long and
well-established history of intellectual property theft and abuse.
I don't know. Microsoft is an IP company. They are generally very clear
as to what they own, and they make damn sure everyone knows it with
pages of legalese in their licenses.
Microsoft also, in my mind, does not have a "well-established history of
intellectual property theft and abuse". They have a well-established
history of using their market dominance and money to push other
companies into some uncomfortable business deals, what has been called
abuse of monopoly power (and rightly so IMHO).
But IP "theft and abuse"? I don't remember much in the way of that.
I can only presume you're referring to the whole Windows vs. Macintosh
"look and feel" fiasco a decade ago. Microsoft won that suit, as I
recall, even though Apple spent millions on lawyers. I recall it was
Apple abusing the system, making outrageous claims about their IP
covering such obvious notions as a pointer and a menu that was hidden
until you clicked on it. I was a Mac addict at the time, and even so I
was embarrassed by Apple's behavior. Instead of building better
software, they tried to take the easy route.
Do you have any examples of IP theft and abuse by Microsoft you'd like
to share? Maybe I'm missing something.
And please don't try to use Eolas as an example. The Eolas patent is
probably invalid due to prior art, as most recent news has shown. Heck,
Mozilla and other open source browsers probably violate the Eolas
patents as well as IE; Microsoft is the target simply because they have
the most money.
Regards,
Ryan