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While in 1991 Bill Gates said in an internal memorandum that patents could bring the whole industry to a standstill and allow bigger players to crush smaller ones, already in 1994 Microsoft lobbied for software patents and was in fact at the time the only one of the large US software companies to do so. In 1999 Microsoft papers looked for ways to "deny open source software access to the market", and patenting was found to be one of two major ways to achieve this goal. In the following years Microsoft became the most prolific patenting software company. In 2003 they hired a prior IBM patent strategist to develop a licensing policy so as to systematically tax the software industry and exclude opensource software. In 2004, Microsoft heavily lobbied the European Parliament for software patentability, but appears to have relied mostly on frontend organisations such as BSA, Comptia, BVDW.de as well as lobbying firms such as Pleon and Campaign for Creativity.

News and Chronology

• 2004-10-28 DE Ballmer: Linux customers migrating back to Microsoft due to patent dangers

• 2004-03-11..12 BE Conference in Brussels 3. European Business summit - including Harney, Kober etc.

• 2004-09-02 US MS CEO: unlike Linux users, MS customers are shielded against patent risks (Ballmer at software industry meeting: "In the Linux world, nobody stands behind patent claims," he said, noting that Microsoft could be forced to swallow a $550 million judgement if it loses its ongoing case with Eolas Technologies Inc, but that its customers would be protected.)

• 2004-08-26 US NewsForge: Email Sender ID: The hype and the reality (--> Patents in Action, Sender ID)

• 2004-08-25 US Microsoft Asserts Patent on Sender-ID Standard (--> Patents in Action)

• 2004-07-29 US Microsoft patents "organising photos based on time"

• 2004-07-21 US Slashdot: Microsoft patents "encouraging viewers to pay attention to television programs, commercials in particular" (--> US6766524, Microsoft, Patents in Action)

• 2004-07-20 MS France Officials: we will use our patents only for self-defense

• 2004-07-20 Microsoft plans 3000 new patents for fiscal 2005

• 2004-07-19 HP Memo forecasts MS patent attacks on free software

• 2004-07-13 Microsoft sued for remote software update technique

• 2004-07-13 Japan Fair Trade Comission conducting an investigation against Microsoft for license terms that disallow to sue Microsoft for patent infringement

• 2004-06-24 Microsoft patents data-transmission through human skin

• 2004-06-09 Microsoft patent strategy directed against OSS

• 2004-06-08 Microsoft patents Task Lists

• 2004-06-02 Microsoft patents Double Click

• 2004-06-01 Hindrup letter to and answer from EU competition commissioner Monti

• 2004-05-27 Microsoft Patent Horror Gallery

• 2004-05-19 Microsoft on the Issues: Patents Pending

• 2004-03-26 EU antitrust decision boosts Microsoft Monopoly

• 2003-12-09 US PubPat.Org & UK The Register: Microsoft FAT patents 'could be re-opened'

• 2003-12-08 UK The Register: Microsoft aiming IBM-scale patent program at Linux?

• 2003-11 Phelps outlines MS patent strategy, criticises EU Parliament

• 2003-02-20 MS SQL Server customers threatened by Timeline patents

Outline

Microsoft has been continuously building an ambitious patent portfolio licensing (= fee collection) program. By being deliberately "reasonable and non-discriminatory" in licensing out its patents, Microsoft is maximising the impact on free/opensource software, which is inevitably excluded from any licensing scheme, be it based on per-copy fee collection or on collection of lumpsum fees or both.

As of 27 March 2006, the EPO publishes 2235 distinct patent family applications (patent state not searchable at the EPO web site). The number of published patent applications worldwide on the EPO web site is 18321.

Microsoft damaged by software patents

• 2005-03 US Microsoft Brad Smith Call for patent reform

MS patent action

• MS vs. Avery Lee: ASF Format, 2000 (German source)