Microsoft was awarded more than 1,600 patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in 2007, placing it sixth on the list of biggest patent performers, according to IFI Patent Intelligence, which tracks patent awards. IBM, which tried but failed to patent outsourcing last year, won the patent count for the 16th straight year, with more than 3,100 patents.

Microsoft is slammed publicly by the Linux Foundation for allegedly attempting to have Linux sued by patent trolls; more patent news

When Microsoft first sued TomTom for patent violations in TomTom's Linux-powered navigation devices, I wasn't sure how much of a fight TomTom would put up. Legally TomTom was between a rock and a hard place. You can't use restricted-use patents in GPLed software.

This week at the X Developers' Conference there was a talk surrounding OpenGL 3.x and its lack of complete support within the latest Mesa code. While development manpower can end up be limiting, there are also some patent / legal issues surrounding this with regard to some parts of core OpenGL being covered by such inhibitive patents.

I'm a wee bit tired by patent FUD and other substitutes for real competition from Microsoft. Microsoft has built a great business on comparatively good products. Yet in its old age, it seems incapable of competing on customer value and instead keeps fetishing its patent portfolio, as if anyone but its lawyers care about those.

Just days after being accused of attempting to unleash potentially harmful Linux-related patents to find their way into the hands of patent trolls, Microsoft is now slated to announce its founding of a new foundation to support open source software.

Today EFF, joined by Public Knowledge, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and the Apache Software Foundation, filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case in which Microsoft is trying to make it easier to invalidate an issued U.S. patent.

Novell and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have announced that the owners of SUSE Linux will help bankroll the EFF's fight against bogus patents and work towards meaningful patent reform on a global level.

Every once and a while some patent scare comes up in the Linux world, often from Microsoft. They all generally go like this: big company says vague thing about their patent and Linux; everyone freaks out. These sorts of issues generally divide technical Linux users into two groups.