Microsoft Looks To 'Moneyball' Patents?

from the fascinating dept

I tend not to agree with Microsoft patent boss Horacio Gutierrez on very much when it comes to patents or Microsoft’s patent strategy over the past few years. But I have to admit I’m fascinated by his plan to take the lessons of the book Moneyball and try to apply them to patents. Apparently, he’s got a team of folks in Redmond, trying to put together data and stats the help judge the value of a patent. I’d be surprised if anything really accurate comes out of it (there are just too many variables and wildcards), but it is an intriguing idea. I wonder if he’ll patent it…

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Comments on “Microsoft Looks To 'Moneyball' Patents?”

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15 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

Here comes the Microsoft bashing. Sigh. Watch all of the Mac fanbois and oss zealots come out to hate on MS as usual. Love em or hate em, but you can’t deny we’d all be sitting in front of a bash prompt if it weren’t for Windows. If they need a few patents to innovate, then what’s the problem? You want to go back to the days when the only people who used computers were hairy old hippies like RMS? The guy eats his own toe cheese! Try living in the 21st century for once. Oh right, that would be too pro-capitalist for this site.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

if you knew your history you’d know that the ‘innovating’ microsoft did was buying, copying, or stealing other people’s work. I’m not a Microsoft hater, but seriously, they have done and continue to do many under-handed things. so does Apple for that matter, the free and open source movements generally don’t but they are also mostly jerks, but we can’t really fault them for that because you’ve just proven they aren’t the only side that has assholes spraying shit all over.

Anonymous Coward says:

“data and stats the help judge the value of a patent.”

The broader a patent,the more it restricts the freedom of others, and the more enforceable the more valuable to the owner. So a patent on eating food, if enforceable, is very valuable. A patent on swinging a swing sideways is useless even if enforceable since people can do without that. A patent on breaking the laws of physics is useless since, by definition, we can’t break the laws of physics so it won’t change anything.

Anonymous Coward says:

What ever happened to just making great software?

This is actually real sad news if Microsoft can’t make good software anymore, and instead has to build a new revenue stream that focuses on collecting royalties on others innovations, and probably continues to collect royalties from innovations of employees that leave or retire. Seems somewhat predatory.

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