Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's Hottest New Profit Center: Android
jbrodkin writes "One of Microsoft's hottest new profit centers is a smartphone platform you've definitely heard of: Android. Google's Linux-based mobile operating system is a favorite target for Microsoft's patent attorneys, who are suing numerous Android vendors and just today announced that another manufacturer has agreed to write checks to Microsoft every time it ships an Android device. Vendors paying off Microsoft for the right to use Android now include HTC, Velocity Micro, General Dynamics, Onkyo Corp. and Wistron. Microsoft likely makes more money from Android than its own Windows phone platform, and its latest patent agreement announced Tuesday indicates Microsoft is also going after Google's Linux-based Chromebooks."
So Microsoft is becoming even more a lawyer company, and a bit less a technical one. If this is true, I won't bet one Microsoft share's raising again.... Did they hire SCO attorneys or laywers? :-)
Only together can MS and Google overthrow Apple and rule the galaxy as father and son.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You can't build from this. Just build up the dislike. New products don't stand a chance. Now give me my N9 you damn Elop. I will write a check to Microsoft myself.
Linux is operating system and Android is software system what use it
NT is operating system and Windows is software system what use it
NT and Linux has nothing to do with themselfs
Windows and Android by default neither but it depens has Android distributor added some features what MS has patented like Exchange API's.
Barnes & Noble is standing up to Microsoft. (buy a Nook to help out!)
http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/04/27/barnes-noble-microsoft-patented-nook-features-trivial-licensing-fees-exorbitant/
But the second and third letters in the names are the same. Linux -- Windows Therefor Linux must have stolen the intellectual property of windows to get those two letters.
I hear if you say Darl McBrides name 3 times in a mirror he will appear and speak to you about his litigation techniques. A few days later you'll receive a cease and desist followed by a lawsuit about trade secrets from Microsoft.
'nuff said. :(
.: Max Romantschuk
but they are using them for e-mail and contact management and calendaring and tasks - all the things that windows PDA's did.
if i remember right - MS the patents on almost all of the Office/Work/Organizer on Mobile device with sync.
It doesn't mater what OS or what language you write that in/on if you are copying someones ideas you are copying them and if they have a patent for it then you are supposed to licence it.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
My fear is they will use the agreements as a wedge to claim ALL of Linux as infringing. Luckily I think Torvalds and Shuttleworth have the resources to fight MS.
So what intellectual property is this about? I couldn't find it in TFA.
You know that your legal and patent system are broken when a company is making more money from a competitor product in the making of which they had no part than from their own product. If you can't make a good product of your own, simply take some of the money your competitor makes for the profit that you're entitled to!
They've always been lawyers. Apple are marketing people. And Google are developers.
Microsoft got lucky way back when and have been ruling ever since because of the fact. The internet will be their downfall; they still don't understand it, and Apple and Google are going to take them to the cleaners. This sort of crap is all they can muster.
I'm surprised they haven't already honestly.
I'm also surprised that none of the big manufacturers did.
Patent wars are getting ridiculous.
You heard it here first, folks; Dr. Bob the chiropractic quack practices "aggressive manipulation" on 9 year old boys.
MS is suing the smaller fish first to set a precedent and build some kind of case for going after the big phone makers. You notice they aren't in any crushing hurry to take on the hundreds of google or Apple lawyers.
Microsoft likely makes more money from Android than its own Windows phone platform,
This statement just cries out for at least a small amount of supporting evidence. The article doesn't appear to make this claim - so did jbrodkin simply pull this out of his nether regions, as I suspect?
#DeleteChrome
How can any company expect to profit from 'purchased patents'. I don't think it'd fly in the more civilised world. If this is the case: NO Mercy. Even if Google won with pi*10^9 dollars, what good would it really be in the end? Let the innovators and not the trolls make out technology.
BillSF
They never really were a tech company, IMO. Their innovations: EULA and software licensing. Most of their products were bought, copied stolen.
Hope is the currency of fools
As much as the anti-MS crowd on slashdot would like this to be true, just saying this does not make it the case. Even if MS got $10 for EVERY Android device, and the 500k untils/month I found on wikipedia is close to accurate, that is 6 million units per year, or $60 million a year. And even if you say that other patent troll-esque licensing agreements multiply that by 10x again to $600 million a year
Microsoft made almost 17 billion last quarter.
Microsoft is a lot of things, but they are not SCO. They are not classic patent trolls with no product. They are basically just like Apple, IBM and Oracle and Google and every other big company. They use their patents to maintain their market share and stifle competition. Bad, but not SCO bad.
You heard it here first, folks; Dr. Bob the chiropractic quack practices "aggressive manipulation" on 9 year old boys.
Oh man, stop it, you're getting me all hot and bothered.
Apple are marketing people./em
Apple is lawyers as much as marketing.
I'm assuming the patents referenced are not OS-specific, so whether Android is Linux-based or Windows-based isn't going to make a bit of difference in court.
As long as the law is on their side and it is in their best interest to do so, Microsoft will continue to sue Android handset makers.
SCO was suing people bigger than them. That's a recipe for hard times. If you're suing a company with deeper pockets than you then you need to actually have a real case. If you're suing smaller companies you can use a lame ass case and bluff them out because they can't afford the ante. It sucks to know your opponent has a pair of 5's but you can't match the pot.
What about those of us getting "nerve issues" from your quack "medicine" and constant trolling of /.? Will you aggressively manipulate us, too? ...will you at least take me out to dinner first?
I'm not saying MS is right for pursuing revenue in this manner but you need to look at a couple of things. #1 Are the patents that other companies are cutting licensing checks for valid or is it just cheaper to pay the license fee then litigate? If the patents are valid and would most likely hold up in a court challenge why should MS be criticized for taking advantage of it? I see no other company or individual out there that wouldn't do the same thing. #2 Android is built on and for a Linux based platform but patents are more geared towards the actual functionality produced not the platform or programming language was used to implement the patented idea.
I have no idea what that meant, but I like it.
I would, if they were sold outside the US.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
When is a company that produces ANDROID-based phones going to stand up to MS and tell them enough is enough, ANDROID is Linux-based, and Linux is not Windows.
Has Micro$oft ever come out and EXPLAINED what their 235 patents that Linux violates were?
I'm curious if this is where the rational comes from. Not that I agree ( I don't ) but I'd love to see their explanation for this. And if they owe anyone a refund!
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Motorola said no to Microsoft and got sued by Microsoft
Mendacem Memorem Esse Oportet
Microsoft has enough money to spend on court battles that many companies would rather pay the protection money than say "f#ck you". Sad, but that's the way it is. This is why monopolies are not such a good thing.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
You know, last I heard, hundreds of Facebook friends was almost the exact same thing as a medical license. In fact, once I get a few more friends I intent to remove my own appendix.
Seems strange - the revenue from the handful of WP7 Samsung phones sold will amount to a rounding error compared to that from their Android sales.
The new m$ mobile business policy: if you can't beat 'em, extort 'em.
Android is not the only ecosystem they shake down for protection money.
Sadly, if your Android based device is using stuff that is covered in patents Microsoft owns ... the platform is irrelevant.
The problem has nothing to do with Linux, and everything to do with how utterly broken software patents are. There's so many of them that a 'skilled practitioner' (ie pretty much any programmer) could develop as being a fairly logical application of other things. In many cases, it's stuff that those of us who took CS in school were actually taught in class, or is stuff that other people had developed years before.
Being Linux doesn't give you a free pass from the suck that is over-broad patents.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Microsoft likely makes more money from Android than its own Windows phone platform,
This statement just cries out for at least a small amount of supporting evidence. The article doesn't appear to make this claim - so did jbrodkin simply pull this out of his nether regions, as I suspect?
It's been the subject of recent speculation given the numbers that HTC pays them $5 for each phone and has sold 30 million sets totaling $150 million. And then compare to what WP7 makes MS:
Microsoft has admitted selling 2 million WP7 licenses, and assuming a price of $15 per license, that's $30 million in revenue.
Okay so that could be incorrect but we're just seeing more and more Android licenses resulting in payment to Microsoft. And I don't think WP7 is keeping up with that.
Is this conclusive? Not at all. The above numbers could be false. Is it probable? Well, that's for you to decide.
My work here is dung.
suing htc is one thing, suing google is another thing.
Read radical news here
To what extent could some of those "aches and pains" be caused by something other than Electromagnetic Fields? E.g. talking on the phone with someone who is making you angry or stressed (e.g. afraid your boss is unhappy and you'll get fired; or your girlfriend/wife is chewing you a new one; etc)?
Stress can certainly add 'aches and pains' to people, and I would not at all be surprised if the increase in people carrying cellphones has resulted in more stress due to the increased frequency which you might engage in such communications, because you can easily be reached 24 hours/day.
Looks like that's changing.
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
MS is suing the smaller fish first to set a precedent and build some kind of case for going after the big phone makers
There aren't many bigger fish in the corporate waters than General Dynamics. The fifth largest defense contractor in the world. Guns, tanks and submarines. The first NSA certified smartphone. The smartphone used by Obama.
Back when Microsoft started making waves about their patents, one of the things often shouted here on /. was "put up or shut up, tell us exactly which patents are being infringed." Nobody ever says what they are (though I think a FAT32 patent on legacy-formatted SD cards might have been mentioned).
What's funny is that the silence didn't mean Microsoft was doomed to lose. AFAIK all the settlements are under NDAs (is this incorrect?). That means that nobody can even prevent the threats by making sure they don't infringe.
I think licensing NDAs should be illegal. Not only do they passively encourage other acts of infringement, but they obscure the cost of patents that society is bearing. Of course, to patent trolls, these two reasons against license NDAs, are reasons for them...
BTW, I don't think making such NDAs illegal would be an infringement of anyone's privacy rights or overreaching government involvement. We're talking about patents, so the premise is that the government is already involved in the transaction, by means of threatening the use of force (courts) against one of the participants. If you want privacy, use a trade secret instead. (It's not that laissez faire is necessarily wrong, but under laissez faire you can't have patents anyway, so the very discussion starts with the idea that laissez faire is off the table.)
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Anyone have any links on exactly what these patents are? I find the patent system incredibly frustrating. It would be one thing if these patents weren't so vague and open to interpretation, but with the way they currently are how the hell can you even create something that doesn't infringe on someone's patent? I guess I would fee differently if I had patents to profit from.
Aren't some of TomTom's newer GPS units Android powered?
Microsoft sued TomTom over patents a few years back (I don't think at the time that TomTom was using Android, specifically, but they were using Linux in their devices). TomTom ended up settling with Microsoft, so I would expect that same settlement would cover any use of Android or any other flavor of Linux.
lol, man I wish I had mod points... :)
Trolling is a art,
So I can stop looking for the hidden message?
YOUIDIOTDOWUXNOOWITAYHIRY means nothing to me... but I am a network guy, not a coder.
Get your Unix fortune now!
That means that Android is not just Linux. A distro of Linux could be free and clear of any MS patents but another distro (or Android for that matter) could violate a MS patent. Just being able to use the Linux kernel in your product doesn't mean that MS may not have a real claim to some of the other technology that is paired up with it.
Free market at its finest !
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Might is try I is probably not understand comment yours.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
There must be some kind of case for legal harassment here. If a small company can point to a larger companies doing the same thing written down in the case against them, yet not being sued, then the plaintiff should be asked to show why they have not protected their shareholder's interests and IP -- their ostensible motivation -- by litigating the largest offenders first? Surely the plaintiff would be delighted to catch the biggest, richest fish with their ostensibly valid case? To my mind the only reason to act otherwise would be legal gamesmanship at the literal expense of the smaller defendants.
Yes, but they are very nice Lawyers.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
There's no precedent in operation here, that's not the kind of court case this is. Plus, settlements out of court hold up surprisingly poorly as precedents.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Visual Studio (best IDE ever done), .NET just to name a few
I was told this is a true story (though I probably remember some of it wrong) -
IBM's Nazgul came calling at SUN one day and demands licensing fee for several patents. After some internal reviews of the patents in question, SUN concluded that there are no merit to IBM's claims. IBM's Nazgul were completely unfazed; "Do you seriously believe that of the hundred thousands of patents in our portfolio, you are NOT in violation of ANY?" Needless to say, SUN ink the licensing agreement.
Considering the amount of patents M$ is sitting on, most probably paid just to avoid any expensive and prolonged litigation. Merit has absolutely nothing to do with it.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
It's never a good idea to pay the Danelaw...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Considering where Billy G came from (family of lawyers,) this is a surprise?
You don't have to be a monopoly to have enough money to have a good legal team. Your statement "This is why monopolies are not such a good thing" is false. It's unrelated.
Of course if you meant to say, this is why companies who make money are not such a good thing that would be related, but I think most people would agree that companies that make money are generally a good thing.
That's because you missed a T!
Charles LaTan, F.D. here! Good to see ya still posting and fighting the good fight against this non-sense and superstition called "science" that bases their opinions on "evidence" and "data"!
Anyway, back on topic .... You are so correct and I'm seeing the same issues in my practice. These poor kids come in and I have run the Tachyon particle and field analyzer on them and usually, just one special Tachyon Quartz crystal fixes them but there are some case that are really bad - yes, the ones that need the dead chicken and Voodoo dance by the naked priestess. One poor kid we referred to one of your colleges got his adjustment and the crystal and STILL had issues.
His stupid parents took him to an orthopedist and well, they got REAL lucky. A couple of sessions with the physical therapist and some Aleve fixed him up - but no matter, that's just the outlier and they have NO proof what so ever that their treatment worked. Fortunately, the parents are coming back for the Tachyon treatment and understand that the crystals and voodoo is what really did it. Some people just respond to the placebo effect from people with those "MD"s at the end of their name.
Oh well. People are just stupid.
If the patents are valid and would most likely hold up in a court challenge why should MS be criticized for taking advantage of it?
Well, for a start, 'legal' doesn't equate to 'right' - something being legal to do doesn't render it beyond criticism.
But it's also quite widely accepted that the patent system is broken - even if you decide that software patents are in themselves permissible, the length of protection the 'inventor' gets from it compared to the pace of innovation in the industry is completely contrary to the original intent of the patent - if anything, the complaint is that this might well hold up in court more than that anybody in particular is doing it.
Interesting. If these companies are licensing patents, isn't it law that those be disclosed on the "credits" screen or something??? I thought if an item sold had a patent on it it legally MUST have the number on it to be valid. As these companies are essentially paying for a license, there should be a page crediting these Microsoft patents.
I think Atari stayed afloat for years like this, way before SCO, and moderately successful at it too.
here are a few of the patents Microsoft claims against Android:
People also expect to be able to access command windows without interfering with the application's main window, and to be able to tab through various screens to find the information they need. Microsoft's patents enable the opening of a new, tabbed control window. (U.S. Patent No. 5,889,522)
Surfing the web quickly is a key device feature. One of the patents in this case enables devices to show the content of a page even while the background is still rendering, allowing users to interact with the page more quickly. (U.S. Patent No. 5,778,372)
Users also want to know the status of their downloads. A Microsoft patent provides information about download status on top of the content display. (U.S. Patent No. 6,339,780)
The ability to select text is critical to working with documents. One of our patents enables users to select text, see what is selected via highlighting, and expand the selection in either direction as desired. (U.S. Patent No. 6,891,551)
Users also want to annotate e-books and other documents. A Microsoft patent allows people to insert and review annotations without changing the underlying document, and to select annotations and be brought to the related portion of the document. (U.S. Patent No. 6,957,233)
I love my rooted Nook Color, and my son loves my old B&W one.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
No, no - they're lawyers in white* suits.
*the color of clothing has no bearing on their litigation motivations.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Why can't we have a website dedicated to invalidating patents?
Crowdsourcing prior-art info preferably public so, as to invalidate the patent without moving domain over to a new patent.
It can't be that hard. Ofcource, if the patent is not yet granted it is easier as then you just send the info along to the examiners who in turn can force the filer to prove it isn't prior art. Once it's granted however we need a way to prove it is prior art as the onus is on us. (google the word, I hate it too...)
I don't think anyone cares about your Facebook achievements here, but your list of /. freaks - which is a more telling statistic hereabouts - is not exactly short.
Actually, no, scratch that. It is surprisingly short, considering your clumsy but persistent attempts to spam completely unrelated topics with promotion of your quackery.
and some other old school linuxes used to have a way to implement long filenames on top of FAT filesystems.
i wonder if they should have sued microsoft for violating their patent
Microsoft likely makes more money from Android than its own Windows phone platform.
Well hell, that tells us a lot doesn't it. They make more money from furniture repair or BillG pinup posters than from their Windows phone platform.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Interesting. If these companies are licensing patents, isn't it law that those be disclosed on the "credits" screen or something??? I thought if an item sold had a patent on it it legally MUST have the number on it to be valid. As these companies are essentially paying for a license, there should be a page crediting these Microsoft patents.
Best of my understanding: Nope. It's not like trademarks, where you have to actively defend the mark in order to retain the rights to the mark.
As the patent holder, you can let everyone in the world use your invention for free with zero acknowledgement of your genius, or you can go around demanding payment with a pinky at the corner of your mouth. Your mileage will vary based on real-world conditions and the geothermal activity of your volcano hideout.
Did they hire SCO attorneys or laywers?
No, these lawyers are competent and got money out of their marks.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The headlines are a bit misleading. Microsoft is offering "Patent protection" (ahem..racketeering) from it's patent portfolio for a $5 fee per device sold. In short, they are not profiting from Android itself, but rather a vague threat that the folks who sell Android 'may' be violating various patents held by Microsoft. In this case, some of these companies probably feel it would cost less @$5.00 than it would to go to court and potentially come out on the losing end. I suppose it is possible that MS present compelling evidence to force these folks into these agreements but I have to wonder.
This is an excellent example of a broken system when someone doesn't even have a good idea if they are legally free and clear or actually violating another's patents.
Free market at its finest !
Except that there is no example of a free market in this story. The whole patent system (government granting exclusive rights to an idea) is yet another governmental mechanism that encourages the development of monopolies and is definitely not a free market principle. Another case where we would be better served by the government just getting out of the way. Software patents are especially ridiculous considering software is just an expression of mathematics.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
Danegeld
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
So he's a republican?
As for TFA this is just damned smart business and if it were Apple or Google doing this the fanbois would be lining up to defend it. How much has MSFT spent on buying up patents this decade? How much have they spent on the patents they've filed? all this does is allow them to get a ROI and I would point out unlike certain OTHER companies...cough cough Apple cough...MSFT has been pretty damned good about giving RAND access to just about everything they've ever done. Don't forget that before they sued they offered TomTom the SAME RAND they offered every flash OEM and got the finger in return.
So don't get pissy that the "free as in beer" standing on a corner with a tin cup business model keeps you from paying RAND licenses, it isn't the job of MSFT or any other corp to prop up your failed business model, which I would argue the deaths or dying spasms of companies like Sun, Novell, and Mandriva shows this is the case. Oh and Proptip: Linux DOES infringe on MSFT patents, because it would be mathematically impossible for it NOT to with the sheer number of patents MSFT has, just as AMD infriges on Intel and vice versa. What are you gonna do, come up with a totally convoluted and ass backwards way for 2+2=4 to keep from infringing? Better start ripping all those video codecs out while you are at it, because with over 2000 patents MPEG-LA pretty much owns video compression/decompression.
In the end it isn't MSFT's fault you don't have the money to buy patents like everyone else, it isn't MSFT's fault you want to give your product away for free. The MSFT patents are filed in black and white for all to see at the patent office, feel free to try to rewrite your entire OS to avoid them. Good luck with that BTW.
Oh and a final bit of food for thought...you are worried about the old dog when it is the young wolves you need to worry about. As in TFA you can do a RAND license agreement and send MSFT on its way, while whom you can't pull that off with is the shitload of patent trolls buying patents like they are going out of style that will want everything including the office furniture, since the only money they make is by bleeding companies. Between that and TiVo showing the corps of the world how to turn Linux into a proprietary OS by simply adding code signing or eFuses? You got bigger things to worry about than MSFT setting up RAND licensing deals with headset makers.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
This Linux statement doesn't make any sense. MS is keeping the patents in question secret, so for all we know, they may just have patented the color of the screen, or some other such nonsense.
>As for TFA this is just damned smart business and if it were Apple or Google doing this the fanbois would be lining up to defend it.
Yes, but there would also be loads of people claiming they're the new evil for doing it, and that they're "Worse than Microsoft ever was."
As for your whole rant about FOSS and RAND licenses, while I may not disagree that it's not Microsoft's fault these projects can't afford RAND license fees, I will say it is largely Microsoft's fault that they have to in the first place. Most of those things shouldn't have been patentable in the first place.
Just the fact that they are licensing it (specifically: what patent) would be a great improvement. Other terms of the agreement are less important. Knowing those other terms would be nice too (for purposes of measuring the cost of the patent system) but even knowing that Red Hat or Novell or HTC licensed Patent X from Microsoft for use in some particular product, would help people to know that Patent X is the threat.
That would be enough for the rest of the world to come together and either fight Patent X or work around infringing it. Look at the situation right now: we are being divided and conquered by the secret settlements. There is currently no defense against this attack (except lots of money). Opening up the settlements could help with that.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
As for TFA this is just damned smart business and if it were Apple or Google doing this the fanbois would be lining up to defend it.
Looks like the same is true for MS doing it.
He often tells me: "Dad, you know, I remember my old days when all Nooks were B&W". :D
How can you keep the patents a secret? If you ask for licenses, don't you generally have to list what the license is for? And even more so when you bring forth a lawsuit?
While I like the idea, I'm not sure how to get the implementation to work. The problem is I don't have to "license" the patent to you, I just have to wave my rights to or contractually promise not to sue you for infringing on my patent. I don't have to put you "under NDA", the contract just has to stipulate that the "license" becomes void if you reveal the contents of the contract.
Now, if we made void all contracts that contain in NDA on their contents, then I could see it working. But short of that, it seems like it would be pretty hard to define what constitutes "NDA licensing" contracts without leaving big loopholes.
wish i had points
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Free market at its finest !
There's nothing 'free market' about patents.
Is this conclusive? Not at all. The above numbers could be false. Is it probable? Well, that's for you to decide.
This sounds like something Glenn Beck would say and doesn't really help your case all that much.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
500k per month? Try more like 500k per day...
http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2011/0628/Android-activations-now-total-500-000-a-day-Google
...sue you way to profit ( and/or get laws passed that guarantee you income ). Sad really that we have come to this point in our society.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Texas Instruments has made a fortune suing over patents.
The cost and list of phones looks very similar to the phone sets that support Microsoft's Exchange Active Sync push technology. Is the lawsuit definitely something to do with Linux or could it just be licensing fees for synchronizing email?
None of the above happened, but I'll be sending you a bill for the mirror.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
I thought that's how you become a $17b company?
Gently reply
The interesting thing about this is it sets a value on not using Windows. To many, many millions of people, it's worth $5 + markup to not have to use WP7. So the market has determined that WP7's value is -$5.00. I'm sure it's worth more than ten times that negative amount, but MS can't rush the shakedown too much or they'll either kill their hosts or ramp up the immune systems of their hosts (i.e., companies which aren't just parasites, because they actually produce value).
Setting aside the question about patens for a moment, your argument would apply to any contract. I mean, it is in the end a court that enforces a contract. Surely you don't intend for the terms of all contracts to be public, do you?
I agree that the patent process is badly broken. I also agree that legal doesn't mean fair or reasonable or even makes common sense. However my original post was about this particular MS action. The gist of the parent post was questioning how MS was making money and his argument was based on the statement. "ANDROID is Linux-based, and Linux is not Windows". My take on why this one statement is invalid is because a lot of software patents are not platform specific.
$5 for the patents.
$15 for the whole operating system.
So by those numbers, one would infer that 33% of the value of MS's OS is held in patents.
I hope that those numbers are seriously wrong. Then again, getting $5/phone for doing nothing is pretty outrageous
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
MS has always been lawyers because I can't remember a time in the past 20 years when someone wasn't suing them over something. Apple are hardware specialist. Proprietary hardware has been the company policy since inception. They suffered when cheaper commodity became the norm. They were so bad off for a while that MS had to invest in Apple to make sure the company survived. Google is comprised of advertisers and marketers that just happen to use good tech to satisfy their main money making operations.
When they charge money for the OS?
Seriously, why should they?
They are succeeding. Android is leading, Apple is #2, Nokia and Symbian are irrelevant, RIM and blackberry are toast.
So M$ makes a few bucks from a protection racket. Who cares?
Eventually it will bite M$ in the ass..
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
Simple solution - just make a change to how contract law works. A contract is legally binding when two parties communicate their agreement to be bound to the terms to a court, which then publishes the contract.
If you keep the terms of an agreement secret, then a court will not uphold that agreement. That means that if you secretly pay MS a lot of money not to sue you, they can sue you anyway. Hence, nobody will secretly pay a lot of money to MS not to sue them.
While we're at it, in the special case of transfers of real-estate the court keeps an index of property owners, updated based on those published contracts. No need for title insurance now, either.
Google uses patents to stifle competition....[Citation Needed]
> Linux DOES infringe on MSFT patents, because it would be mathematically impossible for it NOT to with the sheer number of patents MSFT has,
.. kinda like "i", I'm sure there are infringements), the lawyers involved will be active - or not. Depends how big the target.
Darl McBride, is that you ? You still going on about that Linux patent issue ? I'd have thought that when IBM was in court defending itself against SCO this particular issue has been put to rest. Boy, that was big big news here a few years back and now we get MSFT shills flogging this dead horse ? I believe if there are patents out there that are being infringed (and when boneheads try to patent individual letters in an alphabet
Lets wait and see if MSFT will go after GOOG. This should be good entertainment Break out the popcorn !
Microsoft will eventually extract a tax from any successful Linux device/computer sold with Linux installed. This is their goal. Eventually if you purchase a device with Linux installed you will be paying the Microsoft Tax. There will be no way to avoid it. Bitching on slashdot won't help. The greater Linux community is powerless. Linux developers don't seem to care at least they don't seem very vocal about it. They will continue developing software for Microsoft to claim as their own. Everyone has their collective heads buried in the sand. Barnes and Noble are the only ones standing up to this campaign by Microsoft. I wish B&N well. I will no longer recommend Microsoft products to anyone for any reason what so ever.
Motorola is doing exactly that. They are refusing to pay up to Microsoft nor are they supporting Windows Phone 7.
I'd advise starting with someone else's appendix first; if you have a few hundred facebook friends you're bound to know someone with appendicitis; and in this country there is a good chance they don't have insurance. Then if you get it wrong, you can learn from that before you remove your own.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I think this analysis is actually a good thing.
First up, I think the numbers probably aren’t that far off. Right now MS probably lose quite a lot of money per WP7 phone given the investment they have had to put in to get adoption going (giving away large numbers to staff, developers, advertising and something like $1b to Nokia alone) on top of development costs and infrastructure.
Even if they have sold 5m phones retail with a gross profit of $15 per unit (and I think they are not selling all that fast), they are probably still losing on every unit sold.
Compared with that, the income from Android sales, while modest in terms of total income, is almost pure profit; a few lawyers filing legal threats and signing up contracts, and then pure profit on development and patent costs that (in the case of FAT patents) was spent last century.
If you were a shareholder, would you invest in Steve Ballers business model which is to spend billions trying to reach a point where they might sell say 10m licenses at $15, but competing not only with a free product bankrolled by not only Google but an army of companies like HTC, Samsung and Motorola, but also with a company even larger and more profitable than MS (Apple) which is selling a market leading OS that is far ahead in terms of terms of infrastructure, user base and mature products and design.
Or invest in an alternative business model in which little or nothing is spent or risked, and instead they might sell 100m licenses at $5 each. No competition other than open source developers trying to work around patents? No infrastructure at all, and MS are freed to develop tile like (Win8 looking?) interfaces on-top of Android as with the HTC sense layer, along with partnerships like the Bing in China deal. In fact MS are free to take Android entirely and use it as a mobile platform for .NET etc; its only pride that stops them.
In the end, if even some of the bean counters at MS are thinking about option B, MS has to consider working with platforms that are stronger than them.
They have done this when they ended up supporting iOS by shipping apps for iOS. I always thought that having tools like Visual Studio or Office on all platforms would be a good thing? I know that technically, almost impossible to happen (and MS culture would have to change) but Office 2012 running on Ubuntu or an iPad/Android tablet would be something I would love to see.
I always though MS trying to subvert standards and control the platform was a bad thing; if they make more money off open source, standard platforms that trying to push their own propriety solutions which they control entirely, then we all benefit. If their patents get in the way, developers will route around it (as with GIF, being replaced with PNG) and MS know that.
but they are using them for e-mail and contact management and calendaring and tasks - all the things that windows PDA's did.
if i remember right - MS the patents on almost all of the Office/Work/Organizer on Mobile device with sync.
It doesn't mater what OS or what language you write that in/on if you are copying someones ideas you are copying them and if they have a patent for it then you are supposed to licence it.
Didn't the Newton MessagePad pre-date them all?
If in the future the patents are found groundless, will all those who paid get their money back?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I believe 500k units a month might be in the US only.
keep in mind, it was revealed a few years ago that MS was only making $13 per computer of Windows XP that major OEM's were selling. and this stuff, they don't even have to support..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
It is called math, something i thought would be understood on /. but I guess I was wrong. you see MSFT has literally 10s of 1000s of patents, feel free to look them up. They also buy patents by the hundreds EVERY SINGLE YEAR so the number of patents owned or co-owned by MSFT is probably gaining by about a dozen a day. and very very many of those patents are in...surprise!...OS design. Wow, who would have thunk it?
So you have this OS called Linux, an OS made by large groups spread all over the planet, including many that don't have rules about clean room reverse engineering nor do they give a crap about patents (See ReactOS for an example of the trouble this can lead to) but lets say for the sake of argument that not a single person that has EVER worked on Linux has seen a single line of Windows code (which considering even I got to see the WinNT code when the Win2K leak happened is kinda doubtful) and that everything they've ever done was based on a home grown idea.
Again we are talking about TENS of THOUSANDS of patents here that cover everything from system calls to file systems, from memory management to booting. Now are you gonna HONESTLY tell me that there isn't a single line that in any way, shape, or form, infringes on those huge mounds of patents, really? you know there is a reason why Google doesn't indemnify on Android or WebM, yes? it is because MPEG-LA has enough patents that one would be hard pressed to develop anything that did squat with video that didn't infringe, and I would argue that with MSFT R&D cranking out the patents the same WILL be true of Linux and OS design.
Look in a way we are on the same side here, i think patents and copyrights in their current form need to DIAF as they give the big corps too much power and stifle innovation. But until one gets the system itself changed one can't just go "Well I don't like the system so fuck it and fuck you" which is why so many corps like Intel and AMD and Nvidia do cross licensing, because they know that a patent war would equal MAD. But Linux as a whole doesn't have the money or the patents to play that game against an Apple or MSFT. Sure you have Google and IBM coming to your rescue, but for how long? Already both IBM and Google won't allow GPL V3 since they can't TiVo it, so how long before one or both just forks and creates their own proprietary version with eFuses?
The simple fact MSFT isn't the big scary that it was under gates, now they just offer RAND and walk away, easy enough to get rid of them like in TFA. What is gonna slowly bleed Linux to death is the trolls and the death of a thousand cuts. With so many Linux corps going tits up that is a lot of patents ending up on the market and it doesn't take too many lawsuits in East Texas to drain the life out of smaller companies. No until the system is fixed the ONLY protection is big ass patent warchests which sadly Linux is severely lacking in compared to the competition. I foresee a future where you have "Google Linux" and "IBM Linux" and everyone else is shut out by patents.
Do I think that's great, or cheer if it helps MSFT? Hell no, and in fact there is nothing I'd like more for them to get taken down a couple more notches so the sweaty monkey can be shown the door and someone from the Office team can get in there and bring them back to a business OS company that also makes consumer OSes, not the "ZOMG we need to be Apple!" bullshit we have now. But if you want in this business you gotta play the game and right now everyone else is holding bats and you have a Nerf ball. Not really a fair fight friend.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Have fun paying the licence when MSFT figures out how to patent things such as "breathing" and "walking". /sarcasm
500k a month are 2009 numbers, it is now >5m a month: http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/Gartner-Android-smartphone-sales-surged-8888-in-2010/1297309933
You are right that they are not SCO of course. However lawyers getting more important in a company is always a bad sign as they are not about creating wealth but about getting a bigger part of the pie.
Anyone who generalizes about slashdotters is a typical slashdotter.
I thought SCO was about copyrights, not patents.
Annnnnd no one cares because Motorola phones are complete shit. I bought my first Android from Motorola and it blows donkey. Next time it's HTC.
Are interfaces even patentable?
I say we stop supporting Microsoft and start bashing them in our comments.
That should get them to smarten up.
What a disgusting despicable company.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110427052238659
"Microsoft has a scheme, Barnes & Noble asserts, to dominate Android and make it undesirable to device manufacturers and customers by demanding "exorbitant license fees and absurd licensing restrictions" -- a license fee that it says is more than Microsoft charges for its entire operating system for mobile devices, Windows 7."
And also an L.
The latest reports claim 500,000 units per day , which is up from 300,000/day at the end of last year and 160,000/day from a year ago. If Microsoft could get $10 per phone at those numbers, that's almost $2 billion a year in effectively pure profit, or around 10% of their yearly profit. And in all likelihood Android's numbers are only going to continue growing.
What sets the value of not financially supporting Microsoft and their monopolistic machine, which (as you've shown) artificially inflates the cost of not using Windows?
Who do I pay the money to, to extract this value?
And, how much of what I would pay would go directly to Microsoft?
They're friendly like a date-rapist.
Er, HTC is not some fly by night operation. They have a 35 billion dollar market cap.
They can afford their own litigation if their own legal thought the patents had no merit.
As for TFA this is just damned smart business and if it were Apple or Google doing this the fanbois would be lining up to defend it.
If Google was suing people over something as stupid as software patents, and if they were charging money for products that they didn't make, then they wouldn't have so many fanboys. Part of the reason why Google is so popular is that they're one of the few giants that admit that software patents are a stupid and harmful idea.
How much has MSFT spent on buying up patents this decade? How much have they spent on the patents they've filed? all this does is allow them to get a ROI
Just the fact that MS has wasted money on stupid and harmful ideas means they're entitled to a ROI?
What you're saying is that MS is basically a patent troll now. They buy patents on technology that they didn't invent, charge money for products that they didn't make, and sue the companies who do make popular products that MS can't compete with. It's a retarded business model.
Oh and Proptip: Linux DOES infringe on MSFT patents, because it would be mathematically impossible for it NOT to with the sheer number of patents MSFT has,
That just proves how stupid and unproductive patents are. If you can't innovate without accidentally infringing on numerous patents that you couldn't possibly know about, if you have to pay a patent tax to the industry giants in order to be allowed onto the market in the first place, in order to be allowed to innovate, then patents are very obviously detrimental to competition and detrimental to innovation. They need to be abolished.
In the end it isn't MSFT's fault you don't have the money to buy patents like everyone else, it isn't MSFT's fault you want to give your product away for free.
You're right. It's the law's fault for allowing such a travesty to exist in the first place. But it is Microsoft's fault that they are abusing that system and trying to sue the companies that produce superior products into paying a buggy whip tax. Sure, there may be worse companies out there, but MS is definitely not on the side of Good here.
Google has plenty of cash.
And WHO is the Micro$crot stooge that modded this off-topic?
Microsoft hasn't been a tech company for a lonnnngggg time.
If it wasn't patented, it doesn't count. At least that's how I understand it.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
When I install Ubuntu and I want certain things that they have defined as non-free, I have to download them separately. Google should do this.
For example, if it is the FAT32 drivers that are the source of FUD, Google should not include them with Android any more. Manufacturers are then not "stealing" any imaginary property and the necessary code should be available on Google Marketplace. MS can then take on Google instead of collecting protection money from handset manufactuers.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
In addition to dna_(c)(tm)(r)'s comment, Visual Studio originated as a shameless copy of Borland's IDE.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
You need to give Code::Blocks another try. It is more portable IMHO than Eclipse. Needless to say VS (aka VpoS) isn't portable at all.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Samsung already pays Microsoft a licesne fee.. What you can do though is join us and write your congressman and sentaor a letter explaing this. That will help much more that sticking our heads in the sand.
Unfortunately that will not work. MS will still claim the patents are violated by Linux and unless you take them to court with millions of dollars there is no way to prove differently. And google wont be doing that. This looks like the beginning of the end for Open Source Sofware and Linux in particular. It was good while it lasted though. I guess its time to start paying Microsoft again or get out of tech altogether. They own tech now. And since the Linux people and the Linux foundation is DOING NOTHING about this then Linux is dead.
VS or no VS I find it incredible that anyone could claim Eclipse is better than anything. Have you really used it extensively and compared it to other IDEs? Eclipse is bottom of the pile trash- slow, prone to crashing, broken plugin system, lacking major features, not particularly great for usability, stupid workspace system.
JDeveloper and NetBeans are far better than Eclipse at least, let alone Visual Studio.
I agree .NET was a shameless copy of Java, but it's really not anymore. A combination of things through the years like anonymous methods, operator overloading, improved delegates, generics, LINQ, lambda expressions, and dynamic objects, have put C# way ahead of Java (and most other languages) nowadays. They had a slow start, but the C# team are definitely leaders in programming language evolution now, rather than mere imitators. as they were at the start This is really why C# usage is still rapidly accelerating whilst a number of indicators suggest Java is probably now in decline.
Despite all this none of it's really new, just new in that it's all implemented together in a decent way, I do agree that the general gist of the argument in this thread that Microsoft haven't historically innovated much is true- Visual Studio really borrows more from Borland's older IDEs than anything. I don't think much truly can be called original in computing now though, you can always find something in history that looks similar but was simply implemented before it's time and so never caught on, or was never marketed right, or used with quite the right combination of other technologies and so on.
This one is If you want to help then recommend the Nook over any other ereader. Amazon caved and payed MS.
Motorola is also fighting back.
It might well be the FAT32 patent (actually VFAT). It was upheld in 2004 or so for usage on memory cards, and a lot of Android phones have card slots, unlike iPhones, which would explain why this is not an Apple shakedown too.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Sorry, their INCOME was 17 billion. This $600mil would be 100% profit. That $600 mil per year would be 2.5% and those 2.5% do count...
Once I get a patent on making shitty interfaces, I am *so* suing the socks of /. :P
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Methinks you forgot delimiters. Those spaces are capitalized. :P
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie