OIN scoops up Microsoft patents that were put up for grabs (potentially by patent trolls); similarity to Intellectual Ventures seen

Patent news about Free software, Microsoft, and Microsoft-affiliated patent trolls

Another quick roundup showing what Microsoft is up to with the new patents strategy.

Red Hat reveals details about Microsoft's marketing of anti-FOSS patents; other patent news summarised

Linus Torvalds, Linux creator, came out in a Q&A podcast with the Linux Foundation attacking patent trolls, SUN Microsystems, Microsoft, and More. "[P]atents on software should not be allowed," Torvalds said, "...it just does not work in software....[software] contains so many pieces that nobody could even know whether...different things might be under some completely trivial patent."

Microsoft has been trying anything from copyright libel to patent trolls to actually suing companies like TomTom (after using extortion), so what are the implications?

Europe not only accommodates patent trolls (even in Belgium) but it also intends to make them more potent thanks to legislation that the Parliament in Brussels in discussing

Microsoft tried to auction off some patents that they claim relate to Linux. Patent trolls could have bought them. Instead Open Invention Network (OIN) got them. Why would Microsoft wish to get rid of 22 patents that it presumably could sue Linux over? Let's try to imagine what might have happened.

Patents as a tool that protects the ’small inventor’ may be a Big Myth. They only protect monopolies and feed patent trolls that are not the ’small inventor’ but are rather the ‘vicious lawyer’.