Blackmoor Vituperative

A federal jury in San Diego has ordered Microsoft to pay $1.5 billion to Alcatel-Lucent in a patent dispute over MP3 audio technology used in Windows.

[…]

Microsoft said it believes that it properly licensed MP3 technology from Fraunhofer, paying that company $16 million. Fraunhofer, which helped develop the MP3 compression technology along with Lucent’s Bell Labs, has licensed its intellectual property to companies that want to use the audio format in their products. Fraunhofer has since handed the MP3-licensing duties over to Thomson.

Scores of technology companies, including Apple, Intel and Texas Instruments, license the MP3 technology, according to Thomson’s MP3licensing.com.

(from Tech News on ZDNet, Microsoft hit with $1.5 billion patent verdict)

I am no fan of Microsoft, but this is ridiculous. They licensed the technology from the accepted licensor, Fraunhofer. Maybe if enough cases like this go to court, large software companies like Microsoft will get a ticket to the clue train, and realize that software patents are expensive, absurd, and should be abolished. Maybe if companies like Microsoft start lobbying against software patents, our well-meaning government officials will do something in the public’s interest for once.

While on that track, I read an interesting essay by Paul Graham, who makes the argument that software patents are really no different than hardware patents — that embodying a process in hardware is not intrinsically different than embodying a process in software, and that as time goes on more and more of what “used to be done with levers and cams and gears are now done with loops and trees and closures”. He makes a good point. He has nearly convinced me that all patents should be abolished. But don’t assume that this was his intention. It’s a well-constructed article, with much food for thought. Read it.