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Bilski - What It Means, Part 5 (Conclusion) -- What About Microsoft's Patent Threats?

By Pamela Jones et al.

Let's conclude our series of articles on In Re Bilski by looking at what the ruling may mean for Microsoft's threats against Linux. We can start by figuring out what kinds of patents Microsoft might think it owns.

We've already seen that Microsoft acknowledged in its amicus brief that it owns "process patents", which is the category that the ruling was addressing, and by submitting the brief, clearly Microsoft thought Bilski could impact its software portfolio. When the ruling first issued, you'll recall patent lawyer Gene Quinn immediately wrote that it was bad news for Microsoft, that "much of the Microsoft patent portfolio has gone up in smoke" because, as Quinn's partner John White pointed out to him, "Microsoft doesn't make machines." Not just Microsoft. His analysis was that many software patents that had issued prior to Bilski, depending on how they were drafted, "are almost certainly now worthless."

Much of Microsoft's portfolio, then, must be process patents. He was not the only attorney to think about Microsoft in writing about Bilski.

Full post as published by Groklaw on November 24, 2008 (boomark / email).