TheDeal/CNET News: How open? That’s the big patent question

“If you were to accept patent production as a good proxy for
innovative ability, you would quickly conclude that one of the
software giants is a whole lot more creative than the others.

“The scores go like this: SAP, the $10 billion-in-revenue,
Walldorf, Germany-based king of enterprise resource management, has
a grand total of about 40 patents. Oracle, the $14 billion-a-year
database powerhouse, holds about 625 patents. Then there’s
Microsoft. The current total for the $40 billion ruler of the
world’s desktops is about 4,000 patents, and it’s filing for more
at a rate of 3,000 a year…”

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