Why No War Over MS's Android Patent Shakedown?

jfruhlinger writes "When challenged directly by Oracle over Android intellectual property, Google has proven itself a feisty opponent. So why is it sitting back and letting Microsoft shake down OEMs over its claims to own patents that Android infringes? A disheartened Tom Henderson thinks it's because Microsoft has been smart to go after the vendors rather than poke at Google directly. Still, he wonders when Google will get into the fight." Glyn Moody thinks Google should join the fight as well.

Comments

Perhaps the patents are legit, valid patents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is no one mentioning the possibility that M$'s patents might be legit, novel patents that don't cover something frivolous? That would be a damn fine reason to license the patents.

Re:Perhaps the patents are legit, valid patents?

[jc42]

Allegedly 42 for just the kernel just from MS.

But the main comment about such numbers has been "[citation needed]". MS's patent-violation claims seems to be trade secrets. We can't recode the purported violations, because we don't know where in the code they are and what specific patent they violate. MS won't tell us.

This is part of the "patent troll" concept, and it's why people are classifying MS's patent "agreements" as shakedowns and a protection racket.

Myself, I'd be happy to rewrite any of my code so as to avoid patent and/or copyright violations. As an experienced coder, I can usually come up with several ways to do any particular task. But to do that in a way that violates patents or copyrights, I have to know what they are, and how they violate someone's patent or copyright. This information has become nearly impossible to get from claimants, other than by spending millions of dollars on legal expenses.

The whole "IP" fuss in the US is essentially due to the change in the laws some time back, so that patents can be written in legalese rather than engineerese, making them incomprehensible to anyone but lawyers. And often not even to lawyers, who often respond to questions with "I don't know what that means; we'll have to ask the courts." Again, millions of dollars and many lost years before we get an answer.

Copyright is even more bizarre, with corporations even making copyright claims on nothing at all, or blank lines. Some time back, when SCO claimed a specific number of copyright violations in the linux code, someone did a bit of grepping, and reported that the number agreed almost exactly with the count of "/*" and "*/" lines in the code. But again, SCO never actually told us which lines were in violation of a copyright, making it impossible to rewrite them so they didn't infringe.

Anyone know a fast, efficient way to find out exactly what lines of code are in violation of some corporation's patents or copyrights? Until we can quickly determine that information, they can continue their protection racket unhindered by legal concerns.

The obvious is being missed:

[gcnaddict]

I'm going to leave two points for consideration:

1) as the first AC mentioned, the patents may be legitimate. In discussions about MS patent litigation, I've noted that Microsoft actually does a good job of leveraging patents over which it has ownership rather than simply letting them sit in a bank, so there's a good chance they're leveraging their options because Microsoft may actually be using these patents in Windows Phone 7.

2) Google needs a foothold in the mobile market. Even if this means OEMs have to pay Microsoft for patents Microsoft owns, I figure Google won't care simply because this means Google still has a foothold as both an advertisement platform and an application platform, which is something Google would be hard-pressed to challenge just for the sake of challenging royalties which manufacturers are willingly paying. After all, these OEMs have their own teams of lawyers, and these lawyers likely see something we don't, suggesting to us on the outside that Microsoft may actually have a valid claim to the patents in question.