Patent Law

One Man's Piracy is Another's Business Opportunity

By Les Weinstein, Michael Young, John Leo Wagner, Eric van Ginkel, and Victoria Pynchon

We LOVE the law here at the IP ADR Blog.  And we're huge supporters of the Rule of Law as society's Great Leveller.  We're not, however, all that enamoured of lawsuits as a means to create business opportunity or to stem business losses.

Take a look, for instance, at Bill Gates recent comment about the use of Microsoft Windows in China -- the system is used on 90% of Chinese PC's but most of those OS's are pirated.  

Officially, the software giant has taken a firm line against piracy. But unofficially, it admits that tolerating piracy of its products has given it huge market share and will boost revenues in the long term, because users stick with Microsoft’s products when they go legit. Clamping down too hard on pirates may also encourage people to switch to free, open-source alternatives. “It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not,” Microsoft’s chairman, Bill Gates, told Fortune magazine last year.

For the full article from the Economist -- Piracy -- Look for the silver lining Piracy is a bad thing. But sometimes companies can turn it to their advantage, click here.

h/t to slashdot

Full post as published by IP ADR Blog on July 21, 2008 (boomark / email).