I Scoff At Thee!  A patent expert has scoffed at fears from the open source community that a recently exhumed memo from a high ranking HP exec foretells an imminent legal campaign against the software community based on patent claims.

In a two-year-old memo sent by Gary Campbell, then vice president of strategic architecture, to a number of other HP execs, he said he feared 'Microsoft could attack Open Source Software for patent infringements against OEMs, Linux distributors, and least likely open source developers.'

However Greg Aharonian, a patent expert who run the patnews service said: 'The memo was written two years ago, and not much has happened, not surprisingly. The memo does say that Microsoft will wait three years, and then strike, but I would not bet my money on that. Additionally... Microsoft is planning to return $75bn to stockholders over the next few years. When you have that much cash, tactical battles with patents are a pointless business.'