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Microsoft Sues Motorola Over Android-Related Patent Infringement
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Engadget:
"Microsoft has hit up the ITC over a total of nine alleged patent infringements by Motorola in its Android devices, specifically relating to 'synchronizing email, calendars and contacts, scheduling meetings, and notifying applications of changes in signal strength and battery power.' This should be interesting — will it result in a quick cross-licensing agreement, or a protracted court battle spanning multiple years?"
The ITC complaint was accompanied by a lawsuit in US District Court. Microsoft's Horacio Gutierrez explained the company's reasoning in a blog post.
It's great to see the USS Microsoft sinking after all these years.
On to bigger and better things!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Translation:
We're no longer relevant in this market but we own some patents so we're going to screw as much money out of innovators as we can.
I still want to know how the fuck you can patent checking email or checking battery strength? Or well all this chit is just stuff a guy living in a bubble and suddenly told to make a wireless phone that goes on the internet would think to add himself if he wasn't a moron.. I mean..FUCK
If someone said that, it was wrong, before this one there was Nokia vs Apple
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
This is yet more proof that software patents are stupid.
Wow, one story about how Microsoft says you should develop a Windows 7 phone so that you're safe from patent lawsuits immediately followed by a story about MS suing an Android developer for patent infringement. I think maybe someone in MS PR department needs to read up on the definition of subtlety.
I hope Motorola doesn't agree to any settlement like HTC. best for this to go to court to clear android
Microsoft made the promise that anybody licensing Windows 7 for their product would be indemnified, presumably that means against parties other than MS. And also it includes the right to use any MS patents that are included in the release.
I'm not aware of MS promising not to sue other phone makers using other firmware.
Microsoft will be around for a long time to come, and so will Google, despite all of this. So I wouldn't worry (or gloat) about them. The real concern is how all of this patent litigation will ultimately impact Android application developers. That's what I stressed in my first reaction to this. App developers invest a lot of creativity, time, money and hard work in a platform. If Google doesn't step up now and make a really serious effort to work out deals with all those patent holders, Android as a platform may be in trouble and app developers would suffer.
Google knew all along that smartphones (and mobile phones in general) are a field in which plenty of patents exist, and in which they are enforced aggressively. Google doesn't have a patent portfolio to match the portfolios of Microsoft, Apple or Oracle; so it doesn't represent a counterthreat. But it could try to negotiate license deals. That's what it must do now, not only for itself, not only for Android phone vendors, but above all for the application developer community its platform depends on.
There may not be much mobile love between Google and Apple, but I'm quite sure that neither one wants Microsoft to win anything in such a market.
After all, if Microsoft wins this one, what's to stop them from contriving other overly-broad patents against Apple's iPhone at the first convenient moment?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Earlier today.
*shrugs* I just have a phone that sends texts and calls people, what do I know. :^P
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Hmm .. let's see. HTC, Samsung, LG and Moto make Android phones. HTC, Samsung, and LG also make WinMo (sorry ... WP7) phones as well.
I can't imagine Moto's differentiating factor between all the other handset manufacturers are the only bits that MS has issue with. (Anyways, isn't it all just skinning on top of Google's Android?!)
Soooo, this must be a "screw you" for no longer making WinMo phones?
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
In the past Microsoft was the one screwing over its "partner" and stealing mobile phone technology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendo
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/06/microsofts_masterplan_to_screw_phone/
So having based their smartphone stuff on stolen tech, they're now turning round claiming other people are stealing their tech ?
Oddly enough, it looks like Motorola were the ones who ended up with the Sendo tech.
Microsoft's reasoning is simple: We're going to get our asses kicked by Android in the mobile market, so we're going to use our vast resources to try to destroy yet another superior product. This is standard Microsoft business practice. So shameful.
Anyone have thoughts as to what kind of a corporate war it'd take to have affects similar to what WWI and WWII had on western Europe wherein they lost their taste for military solutions to their problems? I really don't understand why this business method and software patent warfare hasn't yet soured the corporate world into rejecting them yet. I understand the anti-competitive "benefit" of destroying your enemy's capabilities but like any war it's never one sided...
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Let's think about this one. A big-shot at Microsoft tries to explain what's going on RE: a patent suit they're bringing against a competitor. Remember: it's a patent suit here.
Gutierrez:
People use smartphones for much more as well: they surf the web, play music and videos, and run apps.
They do a lot of common activities, yes.
Consumers expect more and more from their smartphones every day, making their phones resemble not so much a phone as a handheld computer.
So really, their smart phones are acting like ordinary computers, right? So perhaps we could imagine their phones in that same problem space, as they are, according to Mr. Gutierrez, basically computers.
Of course, for certain apps to run efficiently on handheld devices, they must be notified of changes in signal strength and battery power and the device must manage memory for storing data.
Of course! I mean, I and the rest of us people with tech backgrounds totally agree with you! Just as in other domains like pagers, heart monitors, etc..., it would make perfect sense that for other small, mobile devices, things like managing power or signal strength would be relevant and important for the end user to know about.
I mean, any one of us people well-versed in the field of technology would probably come up with something similar to what you did. I mean, "of course" we would!
Given the wide range of functionality smartphones offer, they also need to be able to display relevant choices for users efficiently. Microsoft’s patented technologies tackle all of these challenges.
Maybe Microsoft's patents read on some of this technology, but it sure sounds like you're trying to convince us exactly how necessary and obvious the content of these patents are in the context of computers, and I have to ask: Are you trying to win this case, or sink it?
coding is life
from the linked Microsoft blog post:
"we’ve spent over 30 years developing cutting-edge computer software."
hmm... personally, I feel that they've spent 15+ of those years abusing a monopoly thus sabotaging competition and reducing innovation. If theirs can be called innovation it's only because they cut everyone else off at the knees with legal tactics and illegal marketing manoeuvres.
Didn't someone just post in the thread about Microsoft's indemnification promise that no one had ever sued a handset maker for patent infringement?
I read that post too. It said that no one had ever successfully sued a handset maker who used Linux systems for patent infringement. That remains true unless Microsoft prevails in this suit.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I've not got a dog in this hunt, but Windows Phone 7 stacks up very well against the competition. And when that has happened historically, they've been able to become dominant. Think about all of the corporate IT .Net developers and corporate IT phone choosers out there. Microsoft WILL quickly become relevant in the market.
And the phone is just one facet of their .Net/Silverlight strategy. There are much deeper things at work.
Article 1: "Microsoft may be one of the only remaining mobile operating-system providers that charges handset makers a licensing fee, but in exchange vendors get at least one important benefit: protection from intellectual property worries. 'Microsoft indemnifies its Windows Phone 7 licensees against patent infringement claims,' the company said. 'We stand behind our product, and step up to our responsibility to clear the necessary IP rights.'"
Article 2: "Microsoft has hit up the ITC over a total of nine alleged patent infringements by Motorola in its Android devices, specifically relating to 'synchronizing email, calendars and contacts, scheduling meetings, and notifying applications of changes in signal strength and battery power.' This should be interesting -- will it result in a quick cross-licensing agreement, or a protracted court battle spanning multiple years?"
It's more fun if you read it with a Brooklyn accent and imagine a guy with a broken nose saying it.
Maybe add in:
"And just to make sure you understand, RIM actually invented email synchronization, but we had a little talk with the DoJ. See how far that got RIM? Fucking Canucks trying to get in on our action. See; the US government is the muscle. We are, how do you say it... the patron? the patriarch? Maybe, the godfather. Mwuahahahahahah.... Ummm, the evil laugh -- was that out loud? I'm not supposed to do that part out loud."
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Its interesting how companies spout out capitalist philosophy based arguments against laws when it benefits them, but are quick to use non-capitalist strategies to edge the competition out.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Phone patent litigation has become a core revenue stream for the big patent holders, and complaining to he ITC has become standard - it's free (or cheap) and the government does all the work. The media also does loads of free work by writing articles about how X's product imports might be blocked, even though that's never happened...
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
This smells like a desperation move of someone who tries to solve every problem with marketing. Buy our products because they are better? Nope, buy them out of fear. Stupid. My guess is ballmer is in the process of being forced out of microsoft.
The rest I'm unsure about. The "scheduling from a mobile device", "offline syncing", and "context sensitive menu" things may have been innovative, but that's been around for 10+ years so at this point it shouldn't count. The flash monitoring sounds kind of obvious, but the implementation may not be (I don't know much in the area).
It's odd to argue how patents are squashing innovation and then go and use obvious patents that at this point (10+ years since devices started doing that function) are extraordinarily common.
I think Steve is just mad about his bonus.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Well this method worked pretty well for i4i, but I can't wrap my head around this news with that news.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Holy shit!
I didn't think this
http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1805678&cid=33762968
would become reality so fast
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Apple and Microsoft aren't enemies; they have patent cross licensing agreements and they are in different markets. All this Apple vs Microsoft bluster is more marketing gimmick than reality. Microsoft likes Apple as the token competitor and Apple like Microsoft because it validates their proprietary approach to software.
You know what PATENT means?
Patent
Attorney
Trust
&
ENrichment
Tool
5,579,517 "Common Name Space for Long and Short File Names"
5,758,352 "Common Name Space for Long and Short File Names"
So, these two are the the infamous FAT patents.
6,621,746 "Monitoring Entropic Conditions of a Flash Memory Device as an Indicator for Invoking Erasure Operations"
Defrag applied to flash, really that deserve a patent?
6,826,762 "Radio Interface Layer in a Cell Phone with a Set of APIs Having a Hardware-Independent Proxy Layer and a Hardware-Specific Driver Layer"
Hmmm layering an API so that you have an invariant user space API and hardware driver portion. Seems like the kind of thing every OS does.
6,909,910 "Method and System for Managing Changes to a Contact Database"
Really!?!? I wonder how if my first year CS course work violates this patent.
7,644,376 "Flexible Architecture for Notifying Applications of State Changes"
Hmmmm... a publish/subscriber notification protocol, no that has never been done before.
5,664,133 "Context Sensitive Menu System/Menu Behavior"
Ha, Ha, Ha Context sensitive menus! I could have sworn I have seen things like that for the last 20 years or so.
6,578,054 "Method and System for Supporting Off-line Mode of Operation and Synchronization Using Resource State Information"
Hmmm... patenting persistent state storage as part of a synchronization process. Hmmmm... I wonder if any of the hash based synchronizer I have built in the past would infringe.
6,370,566 "Generating Meeting Requests and Group Scheduling from a Mobile Device"
Oh, doing it from a mobile device makes it so much more unique.
They are all garbage patents and if Motorola decides to fight versus cross licensing, I don't believe they will hold up.
That's what it must do now, not only for itself, not only for Android phone vendors, but above all for the application developer community its platform depends on.
That's what Google could try to do, negotiate licensing deals, but they'd better not. Instead Google should, one, make MS prove Google is violating MS patents. And if so two, fight to have those patents revoked.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
So apple/RIM/MS/Google/Motorola/HTC are all in lawsuits against each other?
Why oh why didn't I get a law degree?
In other words, the only ones who are going to win in all this stupidity are the lawyers.
Actually it's been more like 20-25 years of that sort of thing...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Actually, Freescale makes the CPUs for Microsoft. They spun their chip operations off a long while back. I suspect they'd have been a little leery of doing this stupid move (and it IS one...) if they were suing one of their critical suppliers like you hint at.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
How quickly we forget the screw Google efforts and the fact that because the Republicans no longer control the house or the White House they are trying desperate tactics. The cost in bribes and "taking fat cats to dinner" alone to get into bed with the Democrats must have put Microsoft off the lobbyist angle. So why not try the courts?
When you can't compete any longer...
...Hire lawyers!
MS really are a bunch of jerks!
Of course that doesn't mean for a moment that I believe that Apple is suddenly the second largest company on the world either. I'm just waiting for that bubble to pop.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Microsoft Patent Troll.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Windows Phone 7 is not the patsy that Windows Mobile was. It's a threat. Nobody with a Windows Mobile device is dreading an upgrade to a competitive phone.
Name me one other mobile provider that has corporate development support already built into major corporations.
Windows Mobile was a place holder. Windows Phone 7 is a game changer.
Nokia
I see way more nokia smartphones in company use than windows mobile phones. WAY WAY more.
In fact outside the USA, nokia dominates over ALL OTHER PHONE MAKES. ALL OF THEM.
iphone and android put together are a tiny blip to Nokia outside the USA
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Windows Phone 7 is not the patsy that Windows Mobile was. It's a threat. Nobody with a Windows Mobile device is dreading an upgrade to a competitive phone.
Businesses normally don't like spending money for no reason. Many of them that currently have Windows Mobile phone will not like having to spend money on new versions of their current apps. Also they cannot upgrade their current phones to Windows 7. So that gives them no incentive to stay with Windows. They have to buy new apps and get new phones so then it offers no advantage to Windows. That puts it on par with Blackberry.
Couple that with the emphasis that Microsoft has put on Windows 7 Phone being a consumer not a corporate phone. So a brand new phone OS has fewer corporate features than their previous phone. While Blackberry is rolling out more corporate features. Gee, which one will corporations buy?
Name me one other mobile provider that has corporate development support already built into major corporations.
As I said before Windows 7 Phone is focused on the consumer market. It does not matter how much lip service MS pays to having a corporate development environment if corporations are not going to buy Windows 7 phones for their employees because it does not have the features that they need. At best only corporations that develop apps might be interested in Windows 7.
Windows Mobile was a place holder. Windows Phone 7 is a game changer.
So far the market the kept Windows Mobile alive has been the corporate market. And MS is throwing it away for the consumer market. But from what I've seen of Windows 7, they are years behind Apple and Android. Heck, they are years behind WebOS. What do you base this belief that they will be a game changer when the game passed them by years ago?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Motorola have been in the electronics business for a considerable amount of time. Motorola demonstrated the first mobile phone in the 1970s.
Okay, maybe some of Motorola's patents have gone now. But it's still a risk to sue a company with such a diverse number of past innovations.
Word, Office, Excel, Outlook, Access, Powerpoint, DOS, BASIC, Internet Explorer, Visual Studio, SourceSafe, Windows NT, NTFS.
What do all the above and and many more have in common? None of them were originally developed by Microsoft. Most were acquired by buying other companies. Some, like IE(Core rendering engine was Spyglass Mosaic) Windows NT(Core OS was the same as OS/2 developed by IBM) and NTFS (slight modification of HPFS from IBM), were acquired in licensing deals where Microsoft was not always honest about their intentions.
No, BASIC was not created by Microsoft, it existed before Microsoft did, but the company that created it was bought out really early on by Microsoft. Any technology that was invented by a company that Microsoft buys out they claim as their own invention as they now own the company and usually the people that created the technology.
That being said, they did create Win16 and Win32. ADO was a really good idea that they got right the first time, then messed up up, then fixed it, messed it up again and I think have finally fixed it. Works I believe is completely Microsoft. DirectX was a Microsoft project that Microsoft was against originally.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Motorola makes other devices besides phones that use Windows. Why is Microsoft suing one of their own partners? Do they want Motorola to drop Windows all together? Dell, Acer, Symbol, Samsung etc. will all pay attention to this. Microsoft to partners: "In the future, as a Microsoft partner, we will dictate to you the OS your product uses or else we will sue you! We don't care if your hardware requirements cost more using our software."
Why not sue Google directly. Apple didn't, Oracle did. It doesn't matter if Android is open source or not, if Google violated your patents then sue Google. I'm not suing the DOT if my automobile has a flaw. I'm suing the source.
This reeks of extortion. Why isn't Microsoft targeting other Android phones? Oh, the manufacturer also supplies Windows based phones. I think the DOJ needs to re-open the Monopoly case again, specifically the section that details how Microsoft once used office/windows pricing to abuse the hardware manufacturers. Hey IBM, you owe Microsoft $500 million for Windows licenses because you also provide OS/2. Dell only owes us a $100 million for the same amount of licenses.
Those patents listed are weak at best except for the FAT one. Hey Microsoft, users have been synchronizing network data since before 300 baud modems. Rsync pre-dates ActiveSync, and I have scheduled a meeting using a (Yes a) Motorola beeper back in 1995
Motorola owns a shit-load of patents too. Is Microsoft doing the right thing? My inner Yoda says: The patent wars they have begun.
The technology group at Microsoft and the legal/marketing group at Microsoft are not on the same corporate page: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/10/strange-bedfellows-eff-apache-back-microsoft-in-patent-dispute.ars
Microsoft isn't interested in cloud computing. Instead of offering services to Android users (Office, Silverlight, .net etc), they are more interested in protecting the Windows hegemony. This means they have no plan for providing internet services to non-Microsoft clients wanting to use/subscribe to Microsoft cloud applications
Lets discuss..
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
We're going to get our asses kicked by Android in the mobile market, so we're going to use our vast resources to try to destroy yet another superior product.
Except Microsoft leads Android. Microsoft is third in the market with RIM in first and Apple in second. Androids are fourth, behind MS, though growing. Both Androids and iPhones are growing where RIM and Windows Mobile are declining.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Microsoft did create HPFS. Well, Gordon Letwin and his colleagues did, and they were working for Microsoft. It took IBM to rescue HPFS, and it got reasonably stable in the IBM OS/2 1.3x stream (i.e. the IBM fork, also known as the first quality OS/2 release). IBM still had to swat HPFS bugs well into the 2.1x stream, though. IBM completely reimplemented HPFS in format-compatible fashion as HPFS386 since HPFS was hopeless for servers. (HPFS had a very low and very static memory cache. HPFS386 at least lifted the very low part, and for file servers a statically sized cache wasn't too much of a problem. But I'm not sure what Letwin was thinking, since dynamic caching wasn't exactly a new idea when he was working.) Since IBM had to pay royalties for the crap anyway they pretty quickly ditched HPFS386 in favor of JFS, which is quite excellent technology. Modern JFS first appeared on OS/2 and then also spread to AIX, which is now the highest marketshare UNIX platform.
Windows Mobile was a place holder. Windows Phone 7 is a game changer.
iOS was a game changer, Android was a game changer, WebOS was a game changer.
Windows Mobile 7 is a knock off and they know it, which is why they're suing, as far as app development, the future is in web apps, which are usable on any platform, Silverlight was obsolete before it was even released.
Let me see, Oracle is suing Google for patent infringment and copyrights. The question is why is Oracle NOT suing Microsoft for the same technology. If the judicial system had two brain cells they would have dismissed these suits - with prejudice.
The crux of Oracle's suit against Android is -
- Method And System for Performing Static Initialization (6,061,520)
- Interpreting Functions Utilizing A Hybrid Of Virtual And Native Machine Instructions (6,910,205)
- Method And Apparatus For Resolving Data References In Generated Code (RE38,104)
- System And Method For Dynamic Preloading Of Classes Through Memory Space Cloning Of A Master Runtime System Process (7,426,720)
- Method And Apparatus For Preprocessing And Packaging Class Files (5,966,702)
- Protection Domains To Provide Security In A Computer System (6,125,447) and Controlling Access To A Resource (6,192,476)
How is it that Microsoft gets away with CLR's and making commercial products with glee ?
Well. That's the control grid the Anunnakis will have made for mere mortals. All is well in the world. Now go back to sleep.
I think this suit is Microsoft's way of telling Motorola that they aren't happy with Motorola's migration to Android instead of using WinPhone7. Another term for that is extortion...
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.