Global (Nuclear) Patent War

I don’t normally talk about what’s going on in the world of Apple, but since they have attacked the nexus with patent lawsuits, I just thought I would note a few things. I remember once Steve Ballmer once described Linux as a "cancer". They (Microsoft Inc) were always claiming Gnu/Linux stole from them.

Now Apple is claiming Goggle stole the unified search also known as Apple’s '604 Siri patent from them. Apple's voice-activated search function that gathers information from Wikipedia, Yahoo,Wolfram Alpha and you guessed it Google. Without trial Apple was just awarded an injunction on the Galaxy Nexus because of the infringement claim. For a time the Samsung Galaxy Nexus was not even available via the Google Play Store and was deemed as “Coming Soon.” That was messed up especially after Google just dropped the price on the device to $349.99. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Friday issued a temporary stay of the ban on the Galaxy Nexus until Apple responds on July 12. Notice of the order was posted on the court’s website.

Here is the crazy thing. Something called Zhizhen Network Technology say that Apple’s Siri voice assistant infringes on their Xiaoi voice assistant. Siri, which uses voice recognition technology from Nuance, was acquired by Apple in 2010. I'm not sure how true Zhizhen's claim is, but its just hard for any software developer to find out whether they might be infringing someone else's patents. People are often coming up with the same ideas all the time. The cost of defending against a patent infringement is around $2 million before trial even starts, and millions more for a complete defense, even when successful.

While Microsoft hasn't formally rescinded its declaration that Linux violates its patents and is cancer. They seem at have backed off the craziness. Microsoft ranked at number 17 on the list of Linux 2.6.36 contributing companies.