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The i4i v. Microsoft Orders and Permanent Injunction

By Pamela Jones et al.

I have the court documents for you in the i4i v. Microsoft case, the judgment, the permanent injunction, and the memorandum and order, which explains the legal reasoning in support of the order. I also got for you the original complaint by i4i, Microsoft's answer with counterclaim, and i4i's reply to the counterclaim, so you can understand what it was all about. The law firm that won has put out a press release. Microsoft, of course, will appeal. It has 60 days to do so.

You probably think I am delighted. I am not. I hate software patents. And this is precisely why. It is karmic that this happened to Microsoft, who bullies Linux with patent threats and just got an XML patent of its own on August 4th that could, presumably, be used against the entire market. How stupid do we have to be to grant patents on software? On software *standards*? This is what happens. Now do you see it?

FOSS has been taking the lead in trying to educate the world that patents are toxic for software. They disrupt and they block innovation. Software and patents need to get a divorce. You might like to read Red Hat's amicus brief that it submitted in the Bilski case to see why software patents are particularly destructive to the FOSS development model.

As for Microsoft's recent effort to define "open standards" to, as Dana Blankenhorn describes it, "mandate standards bodies to consider patented, protected, proprietary technology on a par with truly open source offerings", what has just happened to the XML standard gives what I consider the absolutely final and complete answer to such a specious argument. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present Exhibit A. It's not open if a judge can shut it down. Or a vendor. Is that hard?

Full post as published by Groklaw on August 12, 2009 (boomark / email).