Alcatel-Lucent has begun court proceedings for its lawsuit against Microsoft, complaining that Microsoft's Xbox game systems violates one of the company's 1993 patents "relating to the code for generating video frames."
The partnership says it plans to demand $1.50 USD for "every alleged misuse of the patent" but it is not clear what is considered a misuse. At worst, the suit could apply ... [ read the full article ]
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I worked for the TTC and now for Bell Canada. We use acatel/lucent all the time at work. Nortel is our main contributor but sometimes we use outside sources. Reliable, innovative and always ahead of everyone else. would not doubt the comments about the Bell Lab inventing things first, as we still have a Bell/Northern Research Lab here just outside of TO.
Nobody said bell labs don't invent things.. just that the example was flawed. ;) As a few of us remember packard-bell were very early players in the desktop pc game.
I hate to have to pay for a spec (standard) or royalties to produce something because I don't posses the original technology but that is the way it needs to be unfortunately.
Sure companies violate trade marks, registration, patents and so on but when they do they take a chance of being busted and paying big penalties. Companies spend lots of monies in research & design (R&D) and there needs to be some compensation for their time, effort, and ingenuity.
As to open source and standards, there doesn't seem to be good standards in open source everyone does their own thing. Documentation and support is horrible Linux is a prime example of this. Now true if you look at Microsquish who should have good standards but you'll find that they don't, however they do document their product pretty well even though. Microsquish's problem is they are too big and have very poor management. But if you look at engineering firms like Lucent you will find very good standards and principles as they are a disciplined company.
So in summary I disagree with your socialistic view at how things should be but that's not to say I don't like open source even though it has its problems it has many positives as well.
