Bill Gates: “Utah Is A Different Place”
14 influential bloggers were invited to Microsoft headquarters this week to interview Bill Gates. Niall Kennedy, one of the invited bloggers asked some hard question about Microsoft, Patents, and Novell. Below is the transcript and notice Bill’s short quip on Utah.
Note — There’s more substance than the Utah quip below, but the Utah comment is just the fun part; the rest is factual and informative, but not as fun:
+++++
Niall:
In the last month it’s been interesting to see the deal with Novell, and I know that was a big deal for Novell and Microsoft to come together. At the same time Steve [Ballmer] has been making patent assertions saying there are over 200 patent violations in the Linux kernel…
Bill:
Actually that’s not a number that comes from Microsoft..
Niall:
Right, that’s an OSRM number from two years ago.
Bill:
[Richard] Stallman gave a speech recently that used that number. I don’t know if he was quoting from the OSRM thing or what. Just judge for yourself. [Gates laughs briefly]
Niall:
OK. Two questions.
- Was Microsoft ever directly involved with the SCO Group in their lawsuit against IBM, either through BayStar Capital or others?
- Why is Microsoft recently choosing to go after supposed patent violations with various operating system companies?
Bill:
I don’t know BayStar.
Niall:
It’s an investment company. One of their executives testified Microsoft invested $50 million to offset SCO’s costs in the lawsuit.
Bill:
When?
Niall:
About a year ago. [Correction: Legal papers filed September 13, 2006]
Bill:
I don’t know anything about it. Is SCO still around? Are they still viable?
Niall:
The lawsuit didn’t go anywhere.
Bill:
What’s the latest? Is SCO still around?
Niall:
I think so.
Bill:
OK. I should look that up. Once upon a time SCO was a vibrant company and I certainly remember Larry Michels and all the guys who worked there. It’s not a name I’ve thought of for many many years.
Niall:
They are in Utah now I think.
Bill:
Wow, that’s a different place. (emphasis is mine)
Niall:
So why the new interest in patent agreements with the different OS vendors? What’s going on?
Bill:
We’ve been doing patent cross-licenses for a long-time. It was a tradition in the computer industry and so we had to go out to all of those companies and give them value, so if they had some intellectual property we could get a license from them.
Digital Equipment, SGI, Hewlett-Packard, NCR, we had to do about 50 different agreements. IBM is the mother of them all, to get the cross-patent agreement with them.
I think because we had a flurry of those, about 10 years to get those basic cross-patent deals in place. I’m not sure if we’re at our peak on that or not. I know we did a ton because we indemnify our users. When you buy Microsoft software we say “hey, if there’s any patent problems, we indemnify you for that.” So we have to both protect enough of our own stuff and have enough licenses in that we can feel comfortable providing that for people.
We got some IP rights from Novell. Novell’s customers got some IP rights from us. It’s pretty normal stuff. The only thing that’s abnormal is open source companies hadn’t been involved in IP licensing and indemnification before. In terms of the commercial industry it’s business as usual.
+++++
If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my feed and reading these other related articles:
- Game Theory and Digg
- Ajaxy Timeline of acquisitions completed by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft
- Series on Queueing Theory
- I rejected Google’s Job Offer
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck and Luke Morton requires Flash Player 9 or better.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Additional comments powered by BackType
Maybe that should become the new tagline for Utah’s branding campaign.
“Utah – Wow, that’s a different place.”
Yeah, I think I like it. It works on so many levels.