Sue Me First, Microsoft

"Microsoft's patent threat is another example of the truth of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's saying that the only thing to fear is fear itself. Here's why: First, Microsoft has succeeded as a company because they have mostly refined the innovations that other companies pioneered. So Microsoft has some major problems with "prior art" and "obviousness" defenses to its patent claims. Second, the creators of GNU and Linux were inspired by Unix, not Windows, and Unix is much older than Windows. Again, prior art and obviousness defenses. Third, Microsoft once actually sold Unix licenses, called Xenix (which they licensed from SCO), but Microsoft later abandoned Xenix in favor of Windows NT, which would indicate (to me, at least) that the ideas for Microsoft's Windows-related patents are probably quite different technology from Xenix. Fourth, our beloved friend SCO actually owned Xenix, and you know that if they could have asserted patent claims against GNU Linux they would have done so. Maybe SCO never patented Xenix. We'll have to wait to see how this wiki page gets edited by people more knowledgeable in this area."

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php?title=Sue_me_first%2C_Microsoft

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/21/229219&from=rss