Tim Lee from the Cato Institute reflects on Microsoft's turn-around on software patents, comparing Bill Gates' statements in 1991 to Brad Smith's recent comments on patents in the software industry.

[Microsoft general counsel Brad] Smith has argued that patents are essential to technological breakthroughs in software. Microsoft sang a very different tune in 1991. In a memo to his senior executives, Bill Gates wrote, “If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.”

What?! Lee is fascinated by Microsoft's contrasting patent statements between 1991 and 2007, he implies that Microsoft must shape business strategies to remain consistent with its PR department. In other words, Lee argues that Microsoft must put the cart before the horse. I believe Microsoft is more concerned about competing in business markets and innovation...

To give Lee more favorable presumption- Lee's argument may be that Microsoft did not like patents when it was a relatively young and small company, but likes them now that its the big firm on the block. Several things remain wrong with this position, not least of all Lee's failure to address how Microsoft is one of the most successful companies in the world because of its patents. Lee not only entirely misses the fact that Microsoft has innovated over the past decade by leveraging patents, but does not address why small firms hold a disproportionate amount of patents in the technology sector, nor why patents will be more valuable to smaller firms that have less means of leverage than larger enties. Most bizarre is Lee's omission of how patents have shaped the decentralized landscape of the technology industries.

By itself, criticizing patents by over-emphasizing what Microsoft execs say 16 years apart is questionable. But then Lee could at least save his op-ed and make it relevant to policy discourse by mentioning several very obviously relevant issues.