

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs wanted to sue Sun - chegra84
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1595733/bill-gates-steve-jobs-tried-sue-sun

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arockwell
No new information in this article. Its just a rehashing of Jonathan
Schwartz's blog entry:
[http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-
artis...](http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-
great-artists-steal/)

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nkassis
This is one really good reason why google should have gone after sun. 8
billion for the patent portfolio of Sun is a bargain. It might not be IBM's
patent chest but it's pretty darn big too and varied.

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naz
Maybe Microsoft approached Sun about licensing for OpenOffice as a preemptive
strike about the .NET patent infringement, and got exactly what they wanted.

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tedunangst
... says former Sun exec who no longer works there.

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nkassis
This sounds like a group of bullies in a schools playground.

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wicknicks
"there's no defence like an obvious offense" -- Sweet!

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wallop
Makes them sound like a bunch of squabbling children.

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nfnaaron
With billion dollar toys that they will take and go home with if you don't
play the way they want.

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stcredzero
This makes patents sound like what they are. Legalese ammunition.

 _Sun had a treasure trove of some of the Internet's most valuable patents -
ranging from search to microelectronics - so no one in the technology industry
could come after us without fearing an expensive counter assault. And there's
no defence like an obvious offence_

Read the original blog post posted elsewhere in these comments. The Inquirer
doesn't deserve more hits for this.

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illumin8
Patents are just ICBMs in the cold war between large corporations. Each
corporation stockpiles enough of them that any legal threat will end in
mutually assured destruction of all parties involved.

The Inquirer is a terrible rag, as well. They not only copy Schwartz's blog
post, they interpret it in cringeworthy ways. Sorry, Steve Jobs had not been
"using concurrence so long he forgot what it was called." Concurrence just had
graphical effects similar to Keynote, and Schwartz was reminding Jobs that
Apple's products had infringed on Sun's patents as well.

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marr
Now that Oracle has these patents, what might we expect to see happen?

