Google lawyer, Tim Porter, has slammed Microsoft for piggy-backing the success of other companies using patent claims. He said that Microsoft's antics were messing with industry innovation.

But what seems to really sail up Porter's noce is that when Microsoft started out it wasn’t possible to patent software and so the company had free reign to push boundaries. Porter told the San Francisco Chronicle: ‘When their products stop succeeding in the marketplace, when they get marginalised, as is happening now with Android, they use the large patent portfolio they've built up to get revenue from the success of other companies' products.

He said that the more people get distracted with litigation, the less they'll be inventing. He points out that by the time Microsoft, founded by Bill Gates and headed by chief executive officer Steve Ballmer, filed its first software patent in 1988 it had already invented Word and DOS.

Google on the other hand has to run a gauntlet of patent trolls with its popular mobile Android operating system He said that large wealthy companies were buying patents to inventions they played no part in - and that goes against the spirit of the patent system.

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