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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.'"
This is what happens when you institutionalize bribery in government. If our politicians weren't so easy to bribe, and the voters weren't so stupid this would not be an issue.
Garbage in, garbage out. And Americans vote for corrupt garbage.
Why is it that if they hold the patents for what the android phones are doing, then why didn't they make a decent phone themselves to start with? How is it that google took their intellectual property they dreamed up and made something so much better than their own crap?
SCO didn't die in vain, they were just sacrificed to make this kind of insane posturing and attitude of corporate entitlement seem normal. We got most of our shock at those tactics out of the way over the years McBride & Co attacked Linux, clearing the path for bigger fish, like Microsoft, to publicly act the same without as much backlash.
Good marketing effort. Idiots.
While I am uneasy about patents, a case for truly innovative products can be made. But this is not innovation. This is patenting whatever one can. Like:
Enable display of a webpage’s content before the background image is received, allowing users to interact with the page faster;
You have got to be effen kidding me. That's a patent? Who was the bonehead that thought something like that is innovation?
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Sorry for not using preview :-"
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
you're as witty as microsoft is innovative.
For a very short period it seemed to the more gullible among us, that you're starting to be a decent company. Thankfully, you've show in no uncertain way that you have not changed, and are still that douchebag bully in dire need to be body-slammed on concrete. I hope that one day it finally happens.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This is the result of letting companies get patents that boil down to numbers and abstract generic processes. I think the only way to fix it is to reform how patents are granted, for what, and for how long. If USPTO simply can't handle the load they're under, then they should complain to their bosses for more resources, reform their practices, or change applicant's expectations.
I'm just sick and tired of the intellectual property arms race/cold war that's been going on now for some time.
Visualize this scenario: Alien civilization arrives on earth tomorrow. Wants to engage in trade, they desperately want food and what they have to offer is very advanced technology, much of which at some point infringes on IP held by Earth companies. We explain how the process works and they boggle, "The only way we ever were able to develop space travel was by rolling back IP laws - bar one: All processes or inventions are Fair Use after no more than 5 years (one of theirs is roughly equivalent to one of ours) with financial incentives to those who release their ideas to the public immediately.
You people are still driving cars?!?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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
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.
They're attempting to make money in the smartphone market. Remember, they gave Nokia over a $billion. They also have the development costs, so say another $billion. And now there's the advertising blitz, half a billion and counting, that just doesn't seem to be working.
You've got two and a half billion in sunk costs. How many handset licenses do you have to take in at $20 each to pay that off? 125 million.
Keep in mind that MicroNokia - oops, Nokia - has said they won't be releasing Windows smartphones until 2012, and that the other manufacturers are NOT happy about the MicroNokia deal, which they see as Microsoft helping Nokia compete against them in the Windows phone market.
WP7 might eventually earn back it's sunk costs, but it's looking pretty doubtful, especially since Microsoft leaked a WP8-based smartphone.
So that brings us to another question. Why is Ballmer still at Microsoft? The answer is simple - remember how he dumped a bucket-load of stock? Look at the timing. That was a warning to the board of directors - dump me, I dump the rest of your stock, and the price goes through the floor.
The pressure to call him on his bluff is just going to intensify, and someone's going to make a fortune shorting MSFT.
RAND doesn't work for FLOSS projects because "reasonable" is in terms of "reasonable fee" and non-discriminatory is "same price to all comers" so while it didn't present a barrier to entry when it was dreamed up, it does to FLOSS where a fee is never charged.
The inability for FLOSS to work with RAND patent licensing is why MPEG is thinking of moving to FRAND - F being Free as in Beer.
Look who is being sued -- Barnes and Noble and other companies that use android on their device. Correction, relatively small companies without large legal staffs that use android on their device. If android is the problem, then why isn't Microsoft suing Google for infringement? Oh, wait, Google has as much money and as many lawyers as Microsoft does. This is much like locking the drug user up in jail, but ignoring the pusher. If Microsoft really believes that android is infringing, then they should go directly after Google.
Who's to say that Google isn't going to give Microsoft a taste of their own medicine and fund B&N's legal battle?