Software Patents and Free Software - Microsoft's Patent Deals

Microsoft's Patent Deals

See also: Novell's patent agreement with Microsoft

In November 2006, a highly controversial agreement was made between Novell and Microsoft that included patent licensing. This led to much criticism of Novell by the free software community.

In June 2007, Xandros announced a similar deal.

On June 13, 2007, a deal was reached between Microsoft and Linspire. In return, Linspire would change its default search engine from Google to Live search.

Ubuntu founder and director Mark Shuttleworth has said that Ubuntu will not be making any such deal, as have Red Hat. These have been joined by a weaker statement from Mandriva that "we don’t believe it is necessary for us to get protection from Microsoft".

On October 2007, IP Innovation LLC, a company specialized in patent-protection, filed a suit for patent infringement against Red Hat and Novell. However, IP Innovation LLC is a subsidiary of a company classified by some as a patent troll, and commentators suspect a strong connection between this company and Microsoft.

In December 2007, Microsoft granted the Samba project access to certain proprietary documents and must maintain a list of related patents for a one-time fee of 10,000 Euros. Microsoft was required to make this information available to competitors as part of the European Commission March 24th 2004 Decision pertaining to antitrust violations.