Microsoft Antes Up:  Microsoft will continue to ramp up its patent filing and intellectual-property licensing efforts, chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates said today in a meeting with financial analysts at the company's Redmond, Wash., campus.
Microsoft plans to file more than 3,000 patents in fiscal 2005 compared to "something over" 2,000 patent filings the previous year, Gates said. The company's planned "cycle of innovation" includes securing intellectual-property rights on Microsoft products and licensing that technology to other companies, signing license agreement to use other companies' software within Microsoft own products, and providing indemnification protection to customers. Gates says Microsoft is still in the early stages of its licensing program.