Sony / Phillips vs MS codec battle

...is whether this might prompt MS to re-think the wisdom of supporting patents on software, more specifically patents on trivial software ideas, 'trivial' being defined as 'ideas that several different practitioners of the discipline inevitably and near-simultaneously would stumble upon'.

That may be hoping too much. Sociopathy makes blind.

mvermeer: I am 'working' on the issue you mentioned, and collecting patents MS might infringe, located at . http://www.geocities.com/hkwint/pat_infr.html

I indeed found lousy far-too trivial patents such as a progress bar and 'tabs' in a web page, which are actually assigned. Microsoft infringes on both, and indeed on much more patents in my opinion (still searching for more).

If somebody knows of any patents not listed there MS infringes upon, please send a message to my lxer-account ( hkwint ), so I can ad them.

I hope Sony and Philips are going to sue them (but I'm just anti MS, and especially anti-DRM in the way MS wants to deploy it). It's outrageous MS claims it has 'invented' things that really were invented by others, MS should get the facts!

If you study some MS patents, it seems their patent-model is: patent things other's have invented and couldn't pay for to patent, and patent things others have patented before, and claim you invented it.

It's time somebody takes action and stop this lying, and that somebody has to have a lot of money for lawyers etc. And as far as I know, Philips and Sony should have that money and expertise. So indeed let's hope the best of it, but I may be hoping too much.