So the big news this week is the written legal battle between Network Appliance and Sun Microsystems. Looks like another round of big companies is going through the patent review process and lawsuits and counter-suits. It seems to be one of the hottest pieces of news among blogs most recently. I agree, somewhat, with Robin’s take on it, posted here. For the Executive look you can read Jonathan and Dave going back and forth in what is an almost public debate.

My take on patents and ideas is really simple. I think in life each individual person has only 1 unique idea. Sometimes these ideas are brilliant and life changing, sometimes they are just a great reflective thought about a friend or family member. I think in information technology there are only a few original ideas, and the rest are just ways to re-create someone else’s ideas. Many of the things we see in the Open Systems world are just re-engineered versions of ideas that folks forgot about from the mainframe world. Take ILM for instance, the idea of file level or block level storage tiering is something that existed within the mainframe. One product was DSM/OS, another I believe was nicknamed AMOS.

I think that as we see technology progress, it regresses at the same time. I have a customer today that is about to deploy VMWare’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure which seems an awful lot like the old days of mainframe terminals again. I think we just keep pushing the bottlenecks around. Notice that I’m not weighing in on the NetApp and SUN legal issue. I think with time it will fade away just like every other patent lawsuit that occurs. Either there will be a settlement or everything will just be mediated behind closed doors.