Shoutbox

From a technical point of view, right now, plus! is untouchable and definitely unique in one way or another... anything that is created, won't compare to plus! and its awesome features.

Messenger Plus to me is a great add-on to messenger.  They may add what ever feature they like to messenger even if it is comparable to Plus!.  As long as the feature doesn't work plainly in the same way.  Which is easy to microsoft as they have access to source code and can manipulate how they want

microsoft have an imago sow they will not steal

quote:

---

Originally posted by Patchou
And there's no reason for them to buy Messenger Plus! as it currently doesn't cost them acent and them get indirect benefits from its popularity

---

Exactly what i feel. Msn mess is so good imo cause of plus and all the plugins that we can add.

Patchou it would do you good to read up some on Intellectual Property rights.

There are four types of protection for Intellectual Property:

- Copyrights
- Patents
- Trademarks
- Trade Secrets

Copyrights covers only your source code. Microsoft cannot copy your code and implement it into MSN messenger. Copyrights don't protect your ideas though. So Microsoft is free to implement a feature of plus as long as they don't copy any of your code.

Patents protect inventions and in the US software can also be patented. I doubt you have a patent on your software. It is a costly process. To protect your "genuine" features you would have to patent them.

Trademarks protect the term "Messenger Plus!" for example. Microsoft could not use this term because of Trademark protection

Trade Secrets protect secret business practices that are not publicly known. This protects against corporate espionage for example.

To sum up, Microsoft could if it wanted to implement some of the features that plus offers into MSN messenger as long as they don't copy your source code but develop the feature independently. Unless you have protected those features with patents of course which i believe isn't the case.
You are really naive if you think Microsoft only buys things but never steals anything. If they were only interested in going the legal route then they would not have been convicted to have illegaly leveraged their monopoly in the US and the EU.

Well I don't know how many people here are MSN Messenger BETA testers but in the surveys about possible future features alot of them were shall we say "inspired" by Messenger Plus!

quote:

---

Originally posted by tgnb

There are four types of protection for Intellectual Property:

- Copyrights
- Patents
- Trademarks
- Trade Secrets

---

How much does it cost to get one of these if u have ur own "original" product ??

well if you do something original it is copywrited to you automaticly.

quote:

---

Originally posted by John Anderton
How much does it cost to get one of these if u have ur own "original" product ??

---

Its not that easy. The procedures for each protection are different and can be quite complex. There are different ways for example of copywrighting something. You can start by placing a copyright notice on your product. You can send yourself the source code via US mail in a sealed envelope for example. But the best protection you get is if you do several of these things in combination. I don't have time to go into it all here. If you are genuinely interested i would suggest reading up on it. Google and Wikipedia are a good starting point for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patents

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademarks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secrets

quote:

---

Originally posted by GiantSpider
well if you do something original it is copywrited to you automaticly.

---

No its not. Go read up about it if before you say things like that. There are certain things you need to do before your code is copyrighted.

quote:

---

Originally posted by tgnb
Its not that easy. The procedures for each protection are different and can be quite complex. There are different ways for example of copywrighting something. You can start by placing a copyright notice on your product. You can send yourself the source code via US mail in a sealed envelope for example. But the best protection you get is if you do several of these things in combination. I don't have time to go into it all here. If you are genuinely interested i would suggest reading up on it. Google and Wikipedia are a good starting point for you.

---

Thanks i'll read up. Thanks for the info n all.
* John Anderton saves all the links