| By Jeremy Geelan | Article Rating: |
|
| December 28, 2006 07:00 AM EST | Reads: |
20,807 |
On Monday it emerged that Microsoft had applied for two patents covering subscribing and discovering what it refers to as "Web feeds" - sparking a furore in the blogosphere and elsewhere that Redmond had imperial designs on RSS users.Writing on his website, Microsoft's Don Dodge tried to pour oil on the troubled waters. "Relax," he wrote. "I believe Microsoft has no intention of enforcing this patent against anyone, and no intention of collecting royalties on it."
"I don't have the inside scoop on this yet, but here is what I think," Dodge, who is Director of Business Development for Microsoft's Emerging Business Team, continued:
"Microsoft is not pretending that they invented RSS...just protecting itself against potential patent infringement lawsuits from 'shell companies' and 'patent trolls' who do nothing but sue big companies. Sad to say this is the current state of the patent system.""Big successful companies like Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and Google are prime targets for patent trolls and their lawyers," Dodge added. "These mostly frivolous lawsuits take years to settle and cost millions of dollars to defend, even if you win."
"Google was sued for patent infringement on GoogleTalk. Blackberry was sued, for $612M by NTP. Red Hat was sued over Hibernate. All of these patent infringement lawsuits cost millions of dollars to settle. And all of them were about commonly used technologies that were in the public domain for years...until some patent troll popped up and produced an obscure patent."RSS, which is on its way out and being superseded by Atom according to the most recent SYS-CON expert i-Technology Predictions, was created in March 1999 by Dan Libby of Netscape Communications, and so the basis for Microsoft's claim seems prima facie to be completely unfounded.
RDF Site Summary, as Libby's invention was called, was used on the MyNetscape portal.
Published December 28, 2006 Reads 20,807
Copyright © 2006 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.
About Jeremy Geelan
Jeremy Geelan is Sr. Vice-President of SYS-CON Media & Events. He is Conference Chair of the all-new International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series, of the International Virtualization Conference & Expo series, of AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo series, and of the long-running SOAWorld Conference & Expo series. He's founder of Cloud Computing Journal, Web 2.0 Journal, AJAX & RIA Journal and other leading SYS-CON titles. From 2000-6, as first editorial director and then group publisher of SYS-CON Media, he was responsible for the development of all new titles and i-Technology portals for the firm, and regularly represents SYS-CON at conferences and trade shows, speaking to technology audiences both in North America and overseas. He is executive producer and presenter of "Power Panels with Jeremy Geelan" on SYS-CON.TV.
![]() |
In Other News 12/28/06 08:38:45 AM EST | |||
In other news an Australian man has registered a patent for a "circular transportation facilitation device" - more commonly known as the wheel. No, really: here's the link! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1418165.stm |
||||
![]() |
KwKSilver 12/28/06 08:37:34 AM EST | |||
Dave Winer post a question on the "personal blog" of MS's Emerging Business Team asking if MS would promise not to sue him if it gets these patents. As you can see there's no response: http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2006/12/patent_lunacy_d.html. |
||||
- AJAX World RIA Conference & Expo Kicks Off in New York City
- Ulitzer’s Amazing First 30 Days in Public Beta
- RIAs for Web 3.0 Using the Microsoft Platform
- SYS-CON Announces Government IT Conference & Expo
- Building a Composite Application Using Multiple Web Services
- SYS-CON's "Government IT Expo" to Highlight Cloud Computing and SOA
- Amazon, Google, Microsoft - Big Three Cloud Providers Examined
- Will Ulitzer Dominate News Content on The Web? -Gartner
- Windows 7 To Launch Publicly May 5
- Cisco Needs to Buy EMC to Own VMware
- AJAX World RIA Conference & Expo Kicks Off in New York City
- Ulitzer’s Amazing First 30 Days in Public Beta
- RIAs for Web 3.0 Using the Microsoft Platform
- SYS-CON Announces Government IT Conference & Expo
- How Did We Get to Windows 7?
- Building a Composite Application Using Multiple Web Services
- SYS-CON's "Government IT Expo" to Highlight Cloud Computing and SOA
- Amazon, Google, Microsoft - Big Three Cloud Providers Examined
- Will Ulitzer Dominate News Content on The Web? -Gartner
- Micro Focus Offers Micro Focus COBOL for Eclipse
- Google Maps and ASP.NET
- Crystal Reports XI & How It Has Changed
- Creating Controls for.NET Compact Framework in Visual Studio 2005
- Converting VB6 to VB.NET, Part I
- How to Write High-Performance C# Code
- AJAX World RIA Conference & Expo Kicks Off in New York City
- Implementing Tab Navigation with ASP.NET 2.0
- i-Technology Photo Exclusive: Bill Gates & Steve Jobs In "Nerds"
- .NET Archives: Getting Reacquainted with the Father of C#
- i-Technology Viewpoint: "SOA Sucks"







































