Microsoft and the Patent Debate

Microsoft, the corporate software giant, is at the center of a debate about the efficacy of patents in an increasingly open source market. Almost half of the companies in the Fortune 500 use the free operating system Linux instead of the licensed, copyrighted Windows system. Microsoft claims Linux violates more than two hundred of its patents, burdening Microsoft with lost revenue and litigation costs which are estimated to be around one hundred million dollars annually. With an increasingly unfavorable market and major competitors such as Google beginning to dominate the market, Microsoft's rigid adherence to its patent policy is questionable.

The patent debate centers on several issues, both economically and developmently oriented. From a fiscal standpoint, patentability encourages the commercialization of inventions, facilitates the entry of small business with a small asset base into the marketplace, and creates an economic incentive for new product development. In contrast, patent usage raises development and user costs, hinders small businesses with the high cost of patent licenses, and impedes the timely integration of solutions into a program, as users are unable to work with the source code to fix bugs.

Microsoft's party line about the patent issue is "we don't like the patent system any more than you do, but while we have it, we will use it." This attitude prevents any constructive compromise between open source software developers and Microsoft, as Microsoft is not only unwilling to drop patents but will also pursue any supposed infringements on its licenses through costly litigation. In the end, computer users suffer as new technological breakthroughs are limited by Microsoft's refusal to change.

If you are interested in nonprofit open source software, contact the developers at Mpower today at 800.562.5150.