Let’s cut to the chase. Microsoft has never been pro-entrepreneur…even in its infancy. Bill Gates was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and presumably got some very good legal advice from his lawyer father, a partner in a major Seattle law firm, when negotiating with IBM regarding MS-DOS.

Now that Windows Vista has shown the emperor is without clothes, Mr. Softee is trying to choke the competition out of existence. Back in 1998, The Onion created a satire piece titled “Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeroes.” Truth is stranger than fiction.

I hope that the Fortune 500 users of Linux stop this Microsoft shakedown. The average open source software user isn’t going to have the financial means to fight Microsoft in court.

In presidential politics, it looks like Congressman Ron Paul with his libertarian views would be most likely to rein in a patent system run amuck. However, at the moment he’s a dark horse candidate.

Hat tip to Roger Parloff at CNNMoney.com.

Licensing agreements are more flexible than franchises because they are not heavily regulated by the government, are more flexible, and are less expensive to create and control than a franchise. Licenses promote entrepreneurs instead of suffocating them with a one-size-fits-all method of doing business one finds with franchises.

There are two primary ways to grow your business through licensing: (1) find others who are willing to pay licensing fees for what you own and make money by replicating your business through these licensees; and (2) become a licensee for the rights to something that would be profitable for your business to use.

If you’ve invented the wheel, license it and make money. If you haven’t, don’t reinvent it. License it from the inventor.

This scam preys on small business owners looking to protect an invention. The so-called “promotion company” will charge a hefty fee to “evaluate” the invention. The results of the evaluation pretty much hinge on the ability to pay, i.e. if you pay the fee, the company will say that your invention is wonderful with plenty of potential.

Of course, this leads to additional scams. One variation is to charge a large amount of money to get legal protection (patent, copyright, trademark, etc.). Or you could be offered a bogus marketing plan that will take more money from your wallet. If you happen to have a truly worthwhile invention, expect the company to push you to sign over your rights to it for little or no money.

This week, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a civil contempt action against four people and eight businesses for alleged deceptive trade practices that include some of the misconduct that I’ve described here.

What this means is that the defendants were already nailed in court but continued to operate.

If you’ve got an invention or other intellectual property to protect, use a reputable business attorney if you don’t know how to do the work yourself.

Hat tip to ConsumerAffairs.com

This appears to be jumping on a bandwagon. Although the U.S. Supreme Court recently refused to hear the challenge to a dubious process patent, the dissent by three Justices suggests that the courts will change patent law if Congress doesn’t do so soon.