Monday, December 17, 2007

Oh, the Irony

Look--the Philippines just made the gadget news--unfortunately, it's not that pretty.

Now I'm not sure whether to cheer or feel embarrassed. I'm not really one of those anti-Microsoft types, so whether Microsoft wins or loses is really not that big a deal for me. What bothers me is that I'm not sure whether this case is valid or not. I'm annoyed by patent trolls and blatant money grabs, so stuff like this makes me highly suspicious (even though this might actually be legit). There's also some irony in all this happening in a country where selling bootleg videos and software is commonplace.

"But Microsoft has reason to be happy,” added. “This case demonstrates even more strongly that in the Philippines, we do not tolerate counterfeiting, we give protection to intellectual property."

I wonder if the lawyer said this with a straight face.

<Engadget, via The Daily Inquirer>

1 comment:

Zhuan said...

I've been following that story for a few days now. I hear you, though the Philippines hardly has a monopoly on selling bootleg stuff. In principle, though regretfully not in practice, RP is committed to fighting IP violations. We're not even in the same league as China where the government almost always looks the other way, and where entire industries are built around blatant piracy. Don't get me started on counterfeit iPhones, Nanos, etc, and heck, they'd probably pioneer human cloning someday too soon.

Philippine (or any other country's) companies, institutions, etc, have as much right to fight for their IP rights as much as Microsoft. I do agree, that the lawyer should have just left out 'the Philippines' in his statement. It is after all, between two business entities, and not between the ROP and Microsoft. It's only funny/embarrassing if he makes it sound that way, otherwise, it's nothing to sneeze at.

(And this is absolutely nothing compared to Ballmer's allegations that Linux "violates" 228 or so patents. He can't even name a single one. That's another story. Now that is funny. Legit or not, the school at least named the so-called violations.)