Pender's Blog

Blog archive

Ballmer Making Patent Noise Again

At this point, even we're tempted to say put up or shut up. Steve Ballmer is back in patent shakedown mode, this time throwing Red Hat up against the wall and threatening to shove it in the trunk of the car and drive it into the woods for a good working over. Well, in a manner of speaking, anyway.

We're staring to wonder, though, whether Microsoft has any cattle to go with its patent hat (that is, whether Microsoft is all hat and no cattle on this issue, as we'd say in Texas -- all talk and nothing to back it up). And Mary Jo Foley thinks there might be something entirely more sinister behind Ballmer's latest eruption.

Posted by Lee Pender on October 10, 2007


Featured

  • Microsoft Dismantles RedVDS Cybercrime Marketplace Linked to $40M in Phishing Fraud

    In a coordinated action spanning the United States and the United Kingdom, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) and international law enforcement collaborators have taken down RedVDS, a subscription based cybercrime platform tied to an estimated $40 million in fraud losses in the U.S. since March 2025.

  • Sound Wave Illustration

    CrowdStrike's Acquisition of SGNL Aims to Strengthen Identity Security

    CrowdStrike signs definitive agreement to purchase SGNL, an identity security specialist, in a deal valued at about $740 million.

  • Microsoft Acquires Osmos, Automating Data Engineering inside Fabric

    In a strategic move to reduce time-consuming manual data preparation, Microsoft has acquired Seattle-based startup Osmos, specializing in agentic AI for data engineering.

  • Linux Foundation Unites Major Tech Firms to Launch Agentic AI Foundation

    The Linux Foundation today announced the creation of a new collaborative initiative — the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) — bringing together major AI and cloud players such as Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic and other major tech companies.