Wednesday, 31 January 2007

Microsoft Apologises, Promises to Withdraw Patent Application for Copy of BlueJ

Microsoft has planned to withdraw an application for a patent for a BlueJ clone called Object Test Bench included as a feature in its Visual Studio 2005.

Microsoft was recently criticised for copying BlueJ, a programming environment designed to teach Java beginners to develop object-oriented Java, and then attempting to obtain a patent for it. It is a project by Deakin University, Australia and the University of Kent, United Kingdom with support from Sun Microsystems. BlueJ is used at many universities. In 1994, Dr Michael Kolling, University of Kent created BlueJ and described it in his Ph.D thesis.


In his blog, Dan Fernandez, Lead Product Manager, Visual Studio Express, states, "the patent application was a mistake and one that should not have happened. To fix this, Microsoft will be removing the patent application in question.

Microsoft has apologised to Kolling and the BlueJ community. The Product Unit Manager is now investigating how this thing began.

Kolling has expressed relief that the affair had cleared up though he has expressed concern that the system of software patents was doing a lot of damage.