Subject: Possible MS-Irony?

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 21:26:19 +0300

http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/4357/53/
Symantec is suing Microsoft about intellectual property developed by
Veritas and acquired by Symantec.  The IP in question is claimed to be
used in Vista, the forthcoming OS from Microsoft.

What might develop from this sequence of events is a list of ironies:

1. The undoing of Microsoft would not be due to Free Software, but due
to patent trolls.

2. Software patents would, after all, turn out to level the playing
field, contrary to expectations of their supporters - due to the nature
of software (a single software application could infringe upon tens or
hundreds of patents, unlike hardware, whose exposure to patents is
limited).
Big software companies would be bogged down by lawsuits from patent
trolls.
Small software companies do not have as deep pockets, and patent trolls
would ignore most of them, rather than bother to reverse-engineer their
software to look for patent infringements.

                                              --- Omer
-- 
MS-Windows is the Pal-Kal of the PC world.
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