Microsoft has no current plans to join the Open Innovation Network, a move that some in the free and open-source community have suggested would benefit them both.
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[Steve] Gibson, who early in the conversation makes it clear he believes in trademarks and copyrights and intellectual property -- although he sees software patents have become a problem -- and has even applied for patents when he's done consulting work, explains how patents get written and then stretched like taffy to be broader and stupider, and then he talks about his reaction to Microsoft's cl

But even Microsoft's childlike "that's mine" attitude about intellectual property and patent violation claims against open source doesn't explain the company's resistance to Red Hat. The question to ask: Whose intellectual property rights is Microsoft seeking to protect?

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has once more claimed that Linux and open source violates Microsoft's intellectual property and patents. Canonical's CEO Mark Shuttleworth thinks Ballmer has it all wrong.

On any given day you can find thousands of words of reporting, advocacy and debate over the role of patents in technology. One side promotes the availability of patent protection as the source of much innovation, while the other contends that patents have exactly the opposite effect, and many other vices besides.

Sometime computer maker and intellectual property clearing house IBM has threatened the fabric of space-time by attempting to patent profiting from patents.

I have pointed this out time and again. Like it or not, the patent war is already here. Luckily, if it hits full throttle, Google will be a part of it on the side of Linux vendors. Google uses Linux and is ready to battle alongside the rest of Open Invention Network, utilizing a collection of Linux patents against Microsoft if it comes down to it.

The case known as "In re bilski" has the potential to go some way towards righting some of the wrongs of the patent industry, while coincidently, transforming the prospects for innovation in the information and software industries.

It’s become an annual event. Steve Ballmer shoots his yap about how Linux and open source violate Microsoft patents. The open-source community says, “OK, show us your cards, your patents,” and Ballmer shuts up for six months or so.