Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Is Florian Mueller biased?

Tech sites left and right cite Florian Mueller's FOSS Patents blog (ironically a Blogger blog) on a frequent basis, because of Mueller's legal and technical knowledge of intellectual properties and legalese.  But of late, I had been wondering whether Mueller's work was being colored with bias against Google.  And now I've just stumbled upon this nugget from Seattle Times' reporter Janet Tu's post from three days ago:
"Mueller has been commissioned by Microsoft to conduct a study on the worldwide use of FRAND-committed patents, which might be seen as a conflict of interest with his blog analyses."
That in itself is not proof that Mueller's work is colored by money flowing from Microsoft's piggy bank, even if Microsoft's Steve Ballmer infamously said, "I'm going to fucking kill Google," and in referencing Google's chairman of the board Eric Schmidt, "I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again."

No, one should not automatically assume, by taking Microsoft's money to do a research on the usage of free, reasonable and non-discriminatory patents (FRAND), particularly at a time when IP lawsuits are flying all around the world over FRAND patents, that Mueller has been tainted.

But it does feels slimy, as in green slime.

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