Patent Law

Pooked

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

Physicists are realizing that dark energy holds the universe together. It's old feed for wranglers at the corporate software corral that dark energy keeps the cattle in the pen. So, Novell Vice President Miguel de Icaza last week whining that Novell striking a patent licensing deal with Microsoft was like bedding the dark-side beast sounded less than intriguing; in fact, it sounded just like whining. In yet another case of childhood reversion, de Icaza wished he stayed to play in the sandbox of open source.

Dragging his sordid tale onto a panel at the MIX 08 conference in viva Las Vegas, de Icaza whimpered: "I'm not happy about the fact that such an agreement was made, but [the decision] was above my pay grade; I think we should have stayed with the open-source community."

Microsoft has developed a cross-platform web media player called Silverlight, celebrating by namesake its werewolf web presence. Microsoft not wanting to soil itself with Linux, Novell is porting the pookie to that platform, calling it Moonlight.

Mozilla maven, but patent rube, Mike Schroepfer wondered aloud whether downloading and distributing Moonlight could would confer patent protection. de Icaza answered: "There is a patent covenant for anyone that downloads [Moonlight] from Novell; as to extending the patents to third parties - you have to talk to Microsoft." Schroepfer scratched back about an inherent inconsistency in calling something open source that is really "patent encumbered." "There are a lot of complicated IP patent-licensing restrictions. Even if you have open-source [products], you can't get the end result you're interested in." Schroepfer did not elaborate what end result he was interested in, but he couldn't help but turn his head at the cute young thing at the gizmo products booth, in the mix 08.

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on March 09, 2008 (boomark / email).