Z:gnu-www-ja-google-engineering-talk--ace0f4-We could conceivably get paten/en

We could conceivably get patents; however, it turns out patents are very, very different from copyright; they have almost nothing in common, and it turns out it costs a lot of money to get a patent and even more money to keep the patent going. And the other thing is, {Microsoft doesn't need to get} you shouldn't assume that what Microsoft is getting a patent on is important because it's a big improvement. It just has to be different. Microsoft can get a patent on something about a file format that's different and then they can force most users to switch over to a new format that uses that idea. And Microsoft can do this because of its market power, its control.