Open Letter: Questions about Microsoft Corp. Intellectual Property

A lot of Linux users (possibly SUSE users already, or in the future) probably want to know more about this, because they might be afraid to infringe upon intellectual property which belongs to Microsoft, which is a thing they may not want to do.
The questions I ask here, also seem important to Microsoft Corp. shareholders, it seems to me, and I believe they have the right to see answers to this questions.

1) When speaking about intellectual property, what is meant? It can't be copyright, since almost all Microsoft Corp. software is closed source, which means people who haven't got access to the code can't have infringed the copyright. Moreover, copyright infringement would be easy to prove, since most of what Steve Ballmer calls "Linux" is open source. Therefore, can 'intellectual property' be put on par with 'software patents'?

2) Since the general believe is software patents aren't enforceable in (amongst others) Europe, does this mean Microsoft doesn't have any Intellectual Property from an European perspective? For the shareholders Steve Ballmer was talking about, this would be very important information.

3) Why does Microsoft Corp. never specify which Intellectual Property Linux infringes on? Is this because Microsoft Corp. doesn't know, is it because Microsoft Corp. is afraid its Intellectual Property isn't enforceable, or is there any other good reason for this?
Why doesn't Microsoft Corp. tell to its shareholders for which Intellectual Property Microsoft wanted to "get the appropriate economic return"? This is important information for the shareholders.

4) If Linux infringes on the Intellectual Property, why hasn't Microsoft already tried to "get the appropriate economic return for [the] shareholders from [Microsoft Corp.] innovation." earlier? The shareholders could already have gotten the appropriate economic return for their investments already if Microft Corp. would have taken action, don't they?

I and my readers, and probably a lot of shareholders, look forward to receiving your answers.

Thanks in advance,

-- H. Kwint

LXer.com editor

Note: Since this is an open letter, it wil be published at our site.

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