Scheduling creativity
Here's the difference between "innovation" and "invention." If you can plan how many things you're "creating" over the next year, you're not creating you're adapting.
Pursuing Growth, Microsoft Steps Up Patent Chase
By STEVE LOHR
EDMOND, Wash., July 29 - Microsoft said on Thursday that it planned to increase its storehouse of intellectual property by filing 50 percent more patent applications over the next year than in the previous 12 months.
Microsoft, the world's largest software company, increasingly regards the legal protection of its programming ideas as essential to safeguarding its growth opportunities.
Speaking at the company's yearly meeting with financial analysts, Bill Gates, the company's chairman, called patents a "very important part" of what he termed the "cycle of innovation" that has been responsible for Microsoft's past prosperity and continued corporate health.
The planned surge in Microsoft patent activity would come at a time when it faces increasing competition from open source software like the Linux operating system, which is distributed free.
