Patent loss creates pro-Microsoft alliances
Published: 26 Sep 2003 10:25 BST
During a recent meeting held at Macromedia's San Francisco headquarters, Silicon Valley companies asked a familiar question: what to do about Microsoft?
But the strategy event, sponsored by the World Wide Web Consortium, differed significantly from so many others, at which participants have typically gathered to oppose the software giant's power. This time, Microsoft was the guest of honour.
"There's no doubt that there are some people who are happy to see Microsoft get nailed for anything," said Dale Dougherty, a vice president at computer media company O'Reilly & Associates. "But for those of us who are part of the Web, we wanted the browser to be on every desktop. And if it has to be a Microsoft browser, OK."
What a difference a patent suit makes. With one staggering loss at the hands of a federal court jury in Chicago, Microsoft has won the support -- if not the sympathy -- of nearly the entire software industry, from standards organisations to corporate rivals that are rushing to defend the company's Internet Explorer browser.
To some competitors and partners who have long been chafed by Microsoft's dominance, the verdict in the patent infringement lawsuit by one-man software company Eolas may initially have seemed an overdue victory -- and one that achieved what the US Department of Justice and the courts had failed to accomplish in regulating Microsoft under federal antitrust laws.
Instead, the verdict is increasingly interpreted as a potentially crushing burden on the Web, threatening to force significant changes to its fundamental language, HTML. Microsoft's competitors fear that Eolas' lawyers will target them next, and its partners -- such as Macromedia and Sun Microsystems -- worry that an enjoined IE browser would be prohibited from running their software plug-ins without awkward technology alternatives.
The result has been a complex shift of industry dynamics that has turned many traditional alliances and rivalries upside down, prompting long-suffering competitors in the browser market to side with archrival Microsoft. At the same time, as the Eolas case has progressed, critics have portrayed company founder and sole employee Mike Doyle as an opportunist, despite his claims to be acting on behalf of the Web against a rapacious captor.
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