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Microsoft Corp., the world's biggest software maker, filed a patent-infringement complaint against Taiwan's Primax Electronics Ltd. after talks on a licensing agreement for computer-mouse technology broke down.

Microsoft filed the complaint because Primax has been ``unwilling to enter into good faith negotiations with us,'' said Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft's general counsel for intellectual property licensing. ``Over two years of attempts by Microsoft to sit down to have a conversation, they haven't shown any willingness to reach reasonable licensing terms,'' Gutierrez said today in a phone interview.

www.bloomberg.com/...news - Preview

patents

In an article last week at Patently-O, law professor John Duffy warns that the Patent Office has staked out positions that, if accepted by the courts, would amount to the de facto abolition of software patents. He's right that the Patent Office has become increasingly hostile to software patents in the last couple of years. However, it's far from clear that the end of software patents is imminent. And Duffy is dead wrong to suggest that fewer software patents would be bad for innovation.

arstechnica.com/...or-software-patent-sanity.html - Preview

patents standards

Microsoft's OSP has been controversial in part because it's basic covenant not to sue developers was crippled by its application only to noncommercial developers, as well as other ambiguities that have been resolved. With this update to the OSP, this restriction is gone, as Sam Ramji, Director of Microsoft's Open Source Software Lab, confirmed:

Microsoft is putting a wide range of protocols that were formerly in the Communications Protocol Program under the Open Specification Promise (OSP). This guarantees their freedom from any patent claims from Microsoft now or in the future, and includes both Microsoft-developed and industry-developed protocols.

We have established a clarification to the OSP that guarantees developer rights to build software of any kind and for any purpose using these specifications, including commercial use.

news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10000124-16.html - Preview

standards patents

Sun irrevocably covenants that, subject solely to the reciprocity requirement described below, it will not seek to enforce any of its enforceable U.S. or foreign patents against any implementation of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenD

www.oasis-open.org/...ipr.php - Preview

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