05/21: Hilf on Patents
Posted by Patrick
IDG has an interview with Bill Hilf, Microsoft GM of Platform Strategy and Director of Microsoft's open source efforts, in regard to the free or open source software patent claim issues raised last week.
He and Sam Ramji also have a blog post up clarifying their position on the issue.
Via Mary Jo Foley.
IDGNS: In hindsight, do you think it was a good idea for Microsoft to release the number of patents it believes are being infringed?
Hilf: What we heard back after the Novell deal was "Give us more transparency. You say that there is IP involved, give us an understanding of what that is." So the attempt was that if we give a number and category of where these things fall, maybe that will help people get an idea of the scope. We are very much calling out to commercial companies to license this stuff and resolve these issues. This isn't like a trivial invention. There are a couple hundred significant patents here.
Hilf: What we heard back after the Novell deal was "Give us more transparency. You say that there is IP involved, give us an understanding of what that is." So the attempt was that if we give a number and category of where these things fall, maybe that will help people get an idea of the scope. We are very much calling out to commercial companies to license this stuff and resolve these issues. This isn't like a trivial invention. There are a couple hundred significant patents here.
He and Sam Ramji also have a blog post up clarifying their position on the issue.
Via Mary Jo Foley.
