Microsoft to sue Sun over OpenOffice.org?

By Stan Beer
Monday, 14 May 2007 15:49

Opinion and Analysis

The thought of Microsoft suing Sun Microsystems for infringing patents it holds for Microsoft Office seems ludicrous. However, according to a leading open source expert that's what Microsoft will have to do if it is serious about trying to uphold its claim that OpenOffice.org infringes 45 of the patents it holds.

Steven D'Aprano is the operations manager of Cybersource, one of Australia's longest running open source and Linux-Windows integration firms. Like other open source advocates he believes that the claim that FOSS (free and open source software) infringes 235 Microsoft patents is nothing but bluster and an attempt to sow the seeds of FUD.

While D'Aprano believes that Microsoft's claims against Linux are destined to go the way of SCO, he finds the claims against OpenOffice.org particularly interesting because the open source office productivity suite is based on Sun Microsystem's StarOffice.

"If Microsoft goes after OpenOffice, which is the free open source version, while ignoring Sun, that will be very interesting," says D'Aprano. "You would imagine that if hypothetically there is a patent violation in OpenOffice, it would also be in StarOffice.

"The first question I would be looking at then is Microsoft going to sue Sun? If they don't, then it strongly suggests that they don't think that their patent is valid. Sun has got dollars to fight it in court and have it overturned."

Thus, we have a situation where Microsoft may have to explain why the open source OpenOffice.org suite infringes upon its patents while Sun's proprietary version, upon which it is based, does not.

D'Aprano believes that it will be almost impossible for Microsoft to win a case based upon the similarity of appearance and function of OpenOffice.org to Microsoft Office.

"Microsoft should know that it is not easy to win a case on look and feel issues because Apple tried to sue Microsoft when Windows came out," says D'Aprano. "They tried to sue Microsoft on the charges that they were copying the concepts of windows, icons, the trash can and all the rest of that. So it's going to be very difficult for Microsoft to argue that they've got exclusive access to the basic user interface elements of windows, mouse, icons. There are similarities in some of the menu items because there are certain standards that Microsoft did not invent, such as the File and Edit menus."

In short, the unspoken challenge to Microsoft remains: if OpenOffice.org infringes 45 Microsoft patents, how many patents does Microsoft believe that Sun's StarOffice infringe?