Microsoft Looks To 'Moneyball' Patents?

from the fascinating dept

Thu, Aug 6th 2009 11:34am — Mike Masnick

I tend not to agree with Microsoft patent boss Horacio Gutierrez on very much when it comes to patents or Microsoft's patent strategy over the past few years. But I have to admit I'm fascinated by his plan to take the lessons of the book Moneyball and try to apply them to patents. Apparently, he's got a team of folks in Redmond, trying to put together data and stats the help judge the value of a patent. I'd be surprised if anything really accurate comes out of it (there are just too many variables and wildcards), but it is an intriguing idea. I wonder if he'll patent it...

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Filed Under: horacio gutierrez, moneyball, patents

15 Comments

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ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 6 Aug 2009 @ 12:00pm

Y'know...
That might be the push behind the obsession with patents, etc.

It's just like hiring an outside consultant. You (comfy exec) think that they (outside consults) have some special branch of wisdom that may or may not be able to be handed to the people who've been working the trenches every day...
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:Lobo Santo (profile), 6 Aug 2009 @ 12:05pm

If you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2009 @ 12:15pm

Here comes the Microsoft bashing. Sigh. Watch all of the Mac fanbois and oss zealots come out to hate on MS as usual. Love em or hate em, but you can't deny we'd all be sitting in front of a bash prompt if it weren't for Windows. If they need a few patents to innovate, then what's the problem? You want to go back to the days when the only people who used computers were hairy old hippies like RMS? The guy eats his own toe cheese! Try living in the 21st century for once. Oh right, that would be too pro-capitalist for this site.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2009 @ 12:21pm

Re:
if you knew your history you'd know that the 'innovating' microsoft did was buying, copying, or stealing other people's work. I'm not a Microsoft hater, but seriously, they have done and continue to do many under-handed things. so does Apple for that matter, the free and open source movements generally don't but they are also mostly jerks, but we can't really fault them for that because you've just proven they aren't the only side that has assholes spraying shit all over.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2009 @ 12:23pm

"data and stats the help judge the value of a patent."

The broader a patent,the more it restricts the freedom of others, and the more enforceable the more valuable to the owner. So a patent on eating food, if enforceable, is very valuable. A patent on swinging a swing sideways is useless even if enforceable since people can do without that. A patent on breaking the laws of physics is useless since, by definition, we can't break the laws of physics so it won't change anything.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2009 @ 12:29pm

Re:
Well, you'd also have to consider the profit to be made in the relevant market share. It may be necessary, and it may be enforceable, but if it doesn't sell for much profit you aren't gonna settle for much.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2009 @ 12:57pm

Re:
>>but you can't deny we'd all be sitting in front of a bash prompt if it weren't for Windows.

You give Windows far too much credit. Try going back further to the days of Xerox Parc, or 1983 when the Apple Lisa hit the market a full two years before Windows 1.0.
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ChimpBush McHitlerBurton, 6 Aug 2009 @ 1:11pm

Re: bash prompt
"you can't deny we'd all be sitting in front of a bash prompt if it weren't for Windows
I deny that. Only a moron or a troll would think or suggest such a thing.
Here, have another helping of toe cheese...

CBMHB
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Trails, 6 Aug 2009 @ 1:21pm

It's a good thing
the author of moneyball didn't write some trivial software that uses his methodology, and then patent it.
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Trails, 6 Aug 2009 @ 1:23pm

Re: Too obvious
This isn't an MS shill, ladies and gents, this is someone pretending to be an MS shill. The bash prompt comment gives it away, it's too obviously wrong, no actual person trying to make a point would use it.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2009 @ 1:39pm

What ever happened to just making great software?
This is actually real sad news if Microsoft can't make good software anymore, and instead has to build a new revenue stream that focuses on collecting royalties on others innovations, and probably continues to collect royalties from innovations of employees that leave or retire. Seems somewhat predatory.
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Steve jobs, 6 Aug 2009 @ 2:16pm

Re:
Bash sucks, C-shell 4 life muther fukuah!!!
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Cloakey, 6 Aug 2009 @ 2:18pm

Re: Re: Too obvious
Yeah, not to mention the average windows user wouldn't know a bash prompt from a whack.
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The Steve Bourne Identity, 6 Aug 2009 @ 2:36pm

Well...
OSX has a bash shell with all the usual suspects including vi.

Just sayin'
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Pete Austin, 7 Aug 2009 @ 7:42am

It's a "PageRank" for patents.
Read the description and it's about thinks like how many other patents link to yours, and how many patents you link to. I wonder if Google have prior art.
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