Microsoft Continues Android Legal Assault

shmlco writes "According to an article on AllThingsD, Microsoft is continuing its legal assault on Android. On Monday the company sued Barnes & Noble, Foxconn International and Inventec over the company's Nook e-reader, alleging patent infringement. To quote Microsoft deputy general counsel Horacio Gutierrez, 'The Android platform infringes a number of Microsoft's patents, and companies manufacturing and shipping Android devices must respect our intellectual property rights. Their refusals to take licenses leave us no choice but to bring legal action.'"

Comments

Re:List of these important patented innovations

[binkzz]

The Microsoft-created features protected by the patents infringed by the Nook and Nook Color tablet are core to the user experience. For example, the patents we asserted today protect innovations that:

- Give people easy ways to navigate through information provided by their device apps via a separate control window with tabs;

- Enable display of a webpageâ€(TM)s content before the background image is received, allowing users to interact with the page faster;

- Allow apps to superimpose download status on top of the downloading content;

- Permit users to easily select text in a document and adjust that selection; and

- Provide users the ability to annotate text without changing the underlying document.

Sorry for not using preview :-"

Promised not to do this?

[nurb432]

Didn't Microsoft promise not to use their patent portfolio in this matter?

Of course, i wasn't one that believed them and i know they are evil, but it would be nice if the media would pound them with being hypocrites.

Re:Big fight about the patent for the laser

[Jeff1946]

The fight over the laser patent was over the idea not a working model. See for example, http://tc.engr.wisc.edu/uer/uer97/author5/content.html

Re:Uh..

[jdgeorge]

HP's deep patent warchest would make them a significantly less appealing target than such patent lightweights as Barnes and Noble, Foxconn, or Inventec.. Furthermore, if I understand correctly, Microsoft has cross-licensing agreements with most major computer companies that specifically prevent many lawsuits of this sort.

Re:Wow REALLY Bad Patents

[Belial6]

Maybe not, but I know that IBM released a tabbed browser in 1996. Lotus Notes 4 had HTTP browsing as one of it's features, and was definitely a tabbed browser. So, not only was tabbed browsing already thought of in 1997, but it was widely deployed in the market.

Re:IF they hold the patents

[harl]

No that's how patents work. In the States there used to be a prototype requirement. If you couldn't make it you couldn't patent it.

Then they removed it.
Then patent trolls appeared.