5 ms·

Oh sheesh. Them again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eolas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eolas If there was ever a patent troll, it's them.

davidw 17y ago
At a certain point in time, that guy had actually made some comments to the effect that they'd limit themselves to Microsoft, rather than pursuing the thing as much as possible, which seemed, in some ways, a 'decent' thing to do (and apparently you can do that with patents; not so with trademarks). Looks like the dollar signs may have won out.
- mahmud 17y ago
  Why on earth would patent-trolling Microsoft be acceptable, even 'decent'?
  - davidw 17y ago
    I'm not in favor of patent trolling, but if you're going to do so, I think they're pretty much fair game. It's not as if Microsoft is a bunch of lily-white innocents, after all. Also, what was 'decent' (note the quotes...) was that they were supposedly just going to go after one group with deep pockets and leave everyone else alone. Once again: I'm not in favor of patent scams, but the idea that you would not simply shake everyone and anyone down was sort of well... 'decent' as far as that stuff goes. So it's sort of a 'negative image' - what's decent is what they were not going to do, if that makes sense.
    - mahmud 17y ago
      It might be bitter-sweet, since MS funded the SCO patent-troll mission, and would be nice to give them a taste of their own medicine; but you have to remember, Microsoft invented AJAX. It's just karmically wrong.
      - ajross 17y ago
        SCO wasn't suing over patents. It was a copyright thing over the Unix source code. MS has actually been comparatively benign with their patent behavior over the years. The FAT thing is the only example I can think of where they've used one agressively. Regardless, if something is wrong it's wrong. Our goal here should be getting the patent system to stop sucking, not using it as a weapon of schadenfreude against companies we don't like.

davidw 17y ago

At a certain point in time, that guy had actually made some comments to the effect that they'd limit themselves to Microsoft, rather than pursuing the thing as much as possible, which seemed, in some ways, a 'decent' thing to do (and apparently you can do that with patents; not so with trademarks). Looks like the dollar signs may have won out.

mahmud 17y ago
Why on earth would patent-trolling Microsoft be acceptable, even 'decent'?
- davidw 17y ago
  I'm not in favor of patent trolling, but if you're going to do so, I think they're pretty much fair game. It's not as if Microsoft is a bunch of lily-white innocents, after all. Also, what was 'decent' (note the quotes...) was that they were supposedly just going to go after one group with deep pockets and leave everyone else alone. Once again: I'm not in favor of patent scams, but the idea that you would not simply shake everyone and anyone down was sort of well... 'decent' as far as that stuff goes. So it's sort of a 'negative image' - what's decent is what they were not going to do, if that makes sense.
  - mahmud 17y ago
    It might be bitter-sweet, since MS funded the SCO patent-troll mission, and would be nice to give them a taste of their own medicine; but you have to remember, Microsoft invented AJAX. It's just karmically wrong.
    - ajross 17y ago
      SCO wasn't suing over patents. It was a copyright thing over the Unix source code. MS has actually been comparatively benign with their patent behavior over the years. The FAT thing is the only example I can think of where they've used one agressively. Regardless, if something is wrong it's wrong. Our goal here should be getting the patent system to stop sucking, not using it as a weapon of schadenfreude against companies we don't like.