"When Microsoft announced the first of its patent interoperability agreements with Novell in November 2006, one of the major claims made in favor of the patent covenant agreement was that it would give customers peace of mind and ensure that they didn’t have to worry about issues such as intellectual property infringement."

Another day, another company developing Linux-based tech falls into line with Microsoft's intellectual property wonks. Japanese Flash maker I-O Data Device Inc has agreed to cough up an undisclosed sum of cash to Microsoft under a Linux software deal. This is the latest such agreement Microsoft has made with a tech company that uses Linux in its products.

"Wednesday night’s Microsoft (MSFT) press release about open source software [OSS] began with one of the most loaded sentences in OSS history: “Today Microsoft Corp. and Linux desktop provider Linspire Inc. announced a broad interoperability, technical collaboration (sic) that also includes intellectual property [IP] assurances.”"

"You know how I always tell you when I make a mistake? Well, it looks like I made one when I told you that I didn't think Massachusetts would care what you said in any emails about Microsoft's OfficeOpen XML specification (now Ecma 376) being proposed as an addition to their list of usable "open standards". I'm hearing that they are reading the emails and will take them seriously."

There is a substantive effort in open source to bring such an implementation of .Net to market, known as Mono and being driven by Novell, and one of the attributes of the agreement we made with Novell is that the intellectual property associated with that is available to Novell customers.

There appear to be a few parallels between what SCO did and what Microsoft is blustering about. They are both concerned about their so called ownership of intellectual property. They both threatend the suppliers and end users of Linux with lawsuits and fines. They both made deals with certain companies to exempt those companies from their browbeating.

One of the enduring soap operas this year has involved the ongoing patent infringement threats by Microsoft against “Linux, OpenOffice, email, and other open source software.” According to Microsoft, 235 of its (unnamed) patents are being infringed, and it should be entitled to be paid for this use of its intellectual property.

Everyone in the Linux world remembers Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's famous comment that Linux is a "cancer" that threatened Microsoft's intellectual property. In 2010 Microsoft is trying hard not to be public enemy No. 1.

MICROSOFT'S INCURSIONS INTO ODF have made a lot of headlines recently because they cause more harm than good to ODF; they fragment it, as usual.