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Microsoft's Coupon Dayz
Microsoft-Kellogg's pact includes Froot Loops trademark 'protection' April 20, 2007 (BreakfastBowlToday) – Microsoft today announced that it had entered into a trademark cross license agreement with leading cereal vendor Kellogg's, granting the grocery giant the right to continue to use the name "Froot Loops" to describe its popular children's cereal. "Everybody knows computer software uses loops, and any one who has ever had their Windows-based computer freeze up knows it has infinite loops," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Ballmer stated that the Redmond giant had no choice but to threaten litigation in order to "get the appropriate economic return for our shareholders from our innovation." |
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Comments (3)
Microsoft has shot itself in the foot many ways, but the relationship of the GPL and these deals has nothing to do with it.
Microsoft is free to license its software and its patents as it sees fit. The problem of compatibility with GPL'd software is for the users/distributors of the software, not for Microsoft.
any thoughts Dino?
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1/ has MS shot itself in the feet because these deals license the alleged patents for use in what it knows to be a GPL product? So it's either approved their spread into any GPL compatible software or the agreement is meaningless because the code purported to be covered isn't.
2/ that if there is any strategic rather than opportunistic money making from these things it is related to avoiding a globally fractured market where regions like the EU where software patents are meaningless (fully I hope) don't end up using Free Software to the exclusion of Microsoft products. I don't think I've explained why for that second one.