Microsoft demands royalties for open-source software

In an interview with Fortune magazine, Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, and Horacio Gutierrez, the company's vice president of intellectual property and licensing, said open-souce software, including Linux, violates 235 Microsoft patents. And Microsoft wants distributors and users of open-souce software to start paying royalties for these alleged violations.

"This is not a case of some accidental, unknowing infringement. ...There is an overwhelming number of patents being infringed," Gutierrez said.

Microsoft executives in Singapore were not immediately available to comment on the article.

Smith broke down the alleged patent violations during the Fortune interview, saying the Linux kernel violates 42 patents and the operating system's user interface violates a further 65. He went on to claim that the Open Office application suite violates 45 patents and open-source e-mail applications infringe on 15 more. Other open-source software applications infringe on 68 patents, Smith said.

Microsoft has been laying the groundwork for patent claims against Linux and open-source software for some time. Most notably, the Redmond, Washington, software company signed a Linux deal with Novell Inc. that indemnifies the company against Microsoft patent claims over Linux. Last week, Dell Inc. joined the deal, becoming the first hardware vendor to do so.

Microsoft has struck other deals with hardware makers. In April, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Microsoft signed a cross-licensing agreement that included a clause that indemnified Samsung against Linux patent claims.