Microsoft: Patents Aren’t Perfect, But They’re The Best We’ve Got

Ideas Matter, the  new organisation that aims to promote intellectual property, talks about the benefits of patents and intellectual property to individuals, but is backed by some very large firms including Microsoft.

In common with most large companies, Microsoft demands employees give it all rights to patents they create at work. It also uses them aggressively against rivals, both in legal cases and as bargaining chips. As part of the Rockstar Consortium, Microsoft bought into the patent stash of failed network giant Nortel, and it has acquired AOL’s patents, some of which were sold on to Facebook.

Given that background we asked a few questions to Microsoft’s COO for EU relations, Ron Zink, at the Brussels launch of Ideas Matter.

Why ideas matter

What is the idea of Ideas Matter?
I’ve been an IP lawyer for more than 20 years, and IP lawyers are pretty good at talking to themselves about IP, but it is lost on 99 percent of the population. You have to make it interesting to them.

You can see that in the name itself. It is Ideas Matter, it is not Intellectual Property Matters or something else. Creativity is important for small companies, for industry and the whole of society.

What is your role at Microsoft?
I’ve had five careers at Microsoft. I moved to Europe seven years ago, as chief IP counsel for EMEA, and about three years ago I took on a  broader role, where I lead all our policy issues for EMEA, for example privacy, security and telecoms. I grew up with IP issues at Microsoft, I started in 1995, and before that I was a lawyer on IP issues.

Trevor Baylis spoke about individuals getting the value from the patents, but it is normal for inventions made on company time to belong to the company. We noticed recently that Twitter has announced it will give its employees more rights over patents they create. Is Microsoft going to change its policy  on this?
I wouldn’t expect we would change our stance on that. when we hire people to come to Microsoft and produce intellectual capital, whether they are writing software or producing ideas, part of their job description is a traditional agreement whereby they are creating for the benefit of Microsoft and our customers, ad the rights do revert to the corporation.

Do you have your name on any patents?
I am an inventor on two patents that have filed. I was giving a presentation to an internal group on a Tablet PC. I had a PowerPoint presentation annotated in my handwriting on my tablet, and simultaneously, I was presenting the Powerpoint slides.

I thought, wouldn’t it be great if I could have a private copy of my Powerpoint, which is annotated, and a public copy being shown to the audience and as I click through the private copy it keeps the public copy moving too.

Has it been commercialised?
There are aspects of it in Office 2007 and 2010. I’m not in product development. We decided we wanted to protect the idea, but it is up to the product group to decide of all the things it could put into Office – what is most compelling to our customers and partners. The second patent relates to the technical side – I am a contributor to that one.

So that’s how it works in a big company, how does it work for small inventors? 
Microsoft is on record in jurisdictions including the US and Europe, saying that we think the system has to work for everybody or it is not a good system.

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