According to the article titled ``Microsoft aims patent guns at Red Hat'' Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's said that ``People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us.'' A complete transcript of his comment can be found here. He also indicated that companies like eolas would come after open source world. These were interesting comments by the Microsoft CEO because (1) he did not directly say Red Hat is obligated but rather said that those who use Red Hat is obligated and (2) he made a prediction. And guess what his predictions came out to be true.

Groklaw reported Thursday that ``patent infringement lawsuit was filed against Red Hat & Novell - Just like Ballmer predicted.'' The patent in question is titled ``User interface with multiple workspaces for sharing display system objects.'' What? Yeah you read it right! It is for something that is very common these days but back then (1987) it may have been an innovation. The patent was originally assigned to Xerox but was later bought by a company called IP Innovation. And guess what it was the same patent for which Apple was sued recently and later settled. The article in Groklaw also points out that Acacia, the parent company of IP Innovation, had a few employees from Microsoft join them recently.

So this brings us to the question of does software patents help us innovate? In my opinion no. But rather the software patents are benefiting the companies like Acacia who have a business model of acquiring software patents (most of which I consider to be just an idea rather than an invention) from inventors and go after companies like Microsoft and Apple. And now they are striking the open source world may because their earnings are going down. We definitely need to reform the software patent system in the US or if possible abolish them completely. None if these might happen any soon.

But if your in Europe you can make a difference. Visit this website to sign a petition to warn the European Parliament and the European Council about the dangers of software patents. Lets hope at least Europe can make a difference.