Microsoft pays patent tax

A calculation done by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLA), dubbed the cash a "patent tax" and thinks that punters would be better off with Linux which does not have to pay anything.

The amount is based on the public numbers that Vole tells various authorities. Apparently Vole pays over $100 million each year in legal fees alone to protect itself from some 35 to 40 patent lawsuits.

Recently Microsoft has paid $1.25 billion to Sun, $536 million to Novell, and $1.52 billion to Alcatel-Lucent to settle patent rows.

North American and European customers pay a larger share of the "patent tax" and that people who pirate Windows pass their share of the tax on to paying customers, the SFLA said.

Linux has no "patent tax" at all, and suggests that this be taken into consideration when choosing operating systems for deployment in places such as schools, the outfit said.

More here. µ