Steve Jobs used patents to pressure Bill Gates into 1997 investment in Apple

Re:Steve Jobs used patents to pressure Bill Gates into 1997 ... by tosseraccount on Friday March 02, 2012 @01:56PM (#3657811)

This is revisionism. Now that Apple's back on top, they can afford to re-write history. Apple's patents were worthless. They invented nothing; everything they claimed was prior art. The real story is Microsoft bailed Apple out. Microsoft had several motivations, none of which was settling patent disputes. They wanted to crush netscape. They wanted to demonstrate to the DOJ that they weren't a monopoly. They wanted to counteract the growth of Linux. Apple was more than willing help out.

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Re:Steve Jobs used patents to pressure Bill Gates into 1997 ... by philwelch on Friday March 02, 2012 @04:54PM (#3658543)

They also wanted Apple to quietly forget that Microsoft stole the source code to Quicktime.

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Re:Steve Jobs used patents to pressure Bill Gates into 1997 ... by infiniteburp on Friday March 02, 2012 @02:37PM (#3658002)

Why is this voted down? It's accurate.

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Re:Steve Jobs used patents to pressure Bill Gates into 1997 ... by Anechoic on Friday March 02, 2012 @04:25PM (#3658448)

I downvoted because the post was misleading (although admittedly the bgr.com article is as well)

>Apple's patents were worthless. They invented nothing; everything they claimed was prior art.

I posted the link to the San Francisco Canyon Company wiki article earlier. Apple had won injuctions in the courts and there's no reason to believe that there wasn't a big payday at the end of the line. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CGN/is_1999_Jan_26/a...

>The real story is Microsoft bailed Apple out.

In Politifact terms, "half true" - the money meant nothing (see the 10-K link I posted below) but the gesture meant that investors felt better about Apple. Let's not forget that Mac Office was one of the most profitable products for MS back then and MS avoided potentially paying out a lot of money for patent infringement. There was also the patent cross-license agreement (which I think was renewed in the early 2000's and answers the question of why Apple didn't go after MS for the same things it went after Android vendors for).

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Re:Steve Jobs used patents to pressure Bill Gates into 1997 ... by funkah on Friday March 02, 2012 @02:50PM (#3658061)

I didn't downvote, but it just seems silly to me to accuse Apple of revisionist history. I think they're a lot more interested in the future than the past.

Apple at that point in history was very close to going out of business, Jobs said that himself. Nobody pretends otherwise. I don't think they are trying to foster any illusions that Apple was anything but a very sick, very poorly-run company in those days.

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