The General Counsel of Microsoft, Brad Smith, is here in Ames Courtroom at Harvard Law School tonight. He offers a wide range of insights, geared fittingly to the many students here thinking about how their careers will unfold over the next half-century, about the future of the Internet, software, and innovation. Three jump out in particular to me as I live-blog his remarks:
* INNOVATION: After praising the historic role of the patent system in the United States, he called for patent reform to improve the quality of the USPTO review of prospective patents and restriction of abuses of the patent litigation system. He notes that MSFT spends $100 million + on defending against patent lawsuits.
* CONSUMER CONFIDENCE: He’s called for fundamental privacy legislation. He’d like to see a national law that ensures transparency for consumers as to information collected about them, allows for access to that information, and puts consumers in control of what’s done with it. (These things tie up with the work that we’ve been doing with the Identity Metasystems project, led by John Clippinger and part and parcel of the Identity Gang.
Mr. Smith also calls for security standards for consumer data. A fine lawyer himself, he cites MacPherson v. Buick, a 1916 case which established product liability in the automobile industry as part of the trajectory toward consumer confidence in their
industry.
* INDUSTRY COLLABORATION: He notes that the industry has come to a stage in its development where collaboration is essential across firms. The history of the railroad provides a nice illustration, he argues. Individuals need to be able to communicate in a much more seamless way. Interoperability has become essential to the computing industry, and to Microsoft in particular.
“Change we have,” he says, since the days of the big competition lawsuit against Microsoft. Coop-etition, is the new watchword. Firms should still differentiate themselves, but should also find ways to collaborate. He’s got the chops to make this statement, as the man who has negotiated an end to many of the anti-trust hassles the company has faced and corresponding protocol-related collaboration schemes. He sees a bridge that will be built between the open source and proprietary software development communities — both of which, he says, are here to say.
I’m eager to ask him what he thinks of the recent news announced by his colleague Ray Ozzie.
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