[mdlug] MS patents OS crippling

Adam Davis amdavis at wideopenwest.com
Sun May 24 00:52:47 EDT 2009


On Wednesday 20 May 2009, Aaron Kulkis wrote:
> R. Kannan wrote:
> > In case you haven't seen this, MS has patented the tools for extortion:
> >
> > "On Tuesday, Microsoft was granted US Patent No. 7,536,726 (it was
> > ... snipped ...
> > http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PAL
> >L&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,536,726.PN.&OS
> >=PN/7,536,726&RS=PN/7,536,726
>
> "until an 'agreed upon sum of money' is paid to 'unlock or otherwise make
> available the restricted functionality.'"
>
> In a closed source world, the technology to do this is trivial,
> and therefore fails the obviousness test.
>
> So it sounds more like a business methods patent to me -- all
> of which were effectively rendered worthless at the appeals
> court level last fall.  SCOTUS has allowed the counter-appeal
> onto the docket -- I don't expect business methods to survive
> their scrutiny, and software patents might get wiped out by
> them, too, as both business methods and therefore algorithms
> were allowed ONLY due to a peculiar ruling by a court back
> in the 1990's, but in complete contradiction to both the
> letter and the spirit of the Constitutional clause which
> mandates that the federal government grant patents and
> copyrights (the current duration of copyright ALSO violates
> the clause which states "for limited periods of time" --
> Life of Author + 20 years wasn't ever considered until
> Mickey Mouse came in danger of falling into public domain,
> and certainly not even during the early years of the country,
> when life expectancy was below 50.
>
> I doubt anyone will challenge this patent, though,
> because it's worthless.  Even IBM stopped making
> crippler-cards for their computers (the cards
> would tie up the bus for a technician-selectable
> percentage of the time) back in the 70's.  Getting
> your mainframe upgraded (i.e. to higher throughput)
> REALLY meant paying for an IBM technician to come
> and pull the card OUT of the mainframe.
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Well, I agree with your main point, that this patent fails the obviousness 
test. I also hope that these 'business method'-type patents are now 
worthless. But I'm not sure about your assertion that IBM has stopped using 
these kind of tactics. A few years ago when I was working on IBM midrange 
systems (variously known as System i, iSeries, or AS/400 computers), IBM 
restricted the 'interactive capacity' of those systems. These systems 
contained what they called an an "Interactive Feature", where if you paid 
IBM more they would allow your system to use a higher percentage of its CPU 
capacity for interactive jobs (5250 terminal sessions). This was ofen 
referred to as the "interactive tax". Exceeding the percentage you had paid 
for would kick off an OS-controlled job that would dramatically slow down 
your system.

So IBM could have a problem with this patent, depending on how its worded. I 
don't think its something they would want to challenge, however. I don't 
think they have much to gain by highlighting their prior art in this area.



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