[ageofwant]

I blame Microsoft for Busines' current infatuation with Imaginary Property. Human civilization was built on the sharing of ideas and the ability to run with your neighbor's smart plan. Now you get sued for patent infringement and the neighbor expects to take rent for the rest of his natural life, and that of his undead estate, for what is almost always, at some level the synthesis of prior human endeavor and ingenuity.

It's fucking bullshit. Luckily the Chinese gets this and wipes their collective arses of what is essentially a western fiction.

[acdha]

Don't blame Microsoft – they're no stranger to the game but this has been exploited since the Supreme Court created software patents as a category. Here's a reaction to flagrant trolling back in 1993:

https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_105.html

Prior to that, you had companies like IBM, who were famous for using their hardware patent library as a club to get competitors to sign licensing agreements.

[rwallace]

I agree with your overall sentiment, but Microsoft didn't start the patent trouble, or even the extreme overreach of copyright law; they were the victim, not the aggressor, in the first round of such.

[puzzle]

Microsoft hadn't really even started when Apple itself had already perfected the fine, dirty art of submarine patents. We're using about early 90's, if not late 80's.