Show me how you beat Microsoft in patent fight
Paula today did a masterful job gathering reaction from the Linux Foundation and Open Innovation Network concerning yesterday's Microsoft-TomTom agreement.
Them's fighting words. But that's all they are, just words.
Having inherited an appetite for show tunes from my mother (hi, mom), I think Audrey Hepburn's Eliza Doolittle (OK, Marni Nixon's) explains it best.
Please don't expline, show me. (Like how the ZDNet blog platform now supports YouTube?)
After spluttering about the need for patent reform, and calling the settlement a non-event, Jim Zemlin's blog post noted the help Linux groups gave TomTom and then told developers to stop dealing with Microsoft.
OIN CEO Keith Bergelt called the result "anticipated" and intimated a "response."
This is spin. If the settlement were anticipated, the responses should have been ready. If the community's support was invaluable, TomTom should not have caved. They caved.
Exactly what actions are going to follow these words?
- A direct attack on the validity of the FAT patent, based on in re Bilski?
- A coordinated media campaign against Microsoft? Perhaps a lobbying campaign?
- A new push for patent reform before Congress? (Cough, uh, pharma, cough.)
If all this was expected, if this was no surprise, those plans should be right at hand. If this was a David vs. Goliath story, it was the one from The Simpsons. Goliath won. "To us, he was Goliath the consensus builder."
Now, please do something soon to make what I just wrote seem foolish.