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Samsung Joins Ranks of Android Vendors Licensing Microsoft Patents
theodp writes "GeekWire reports that Microsoft and Samsung just announced a patent licensing agreement that gives Samsung legal coverage for its use of Google's Android OS in its smartphones. Under the deal, which covers both mobile phones and tablets, Microsoft says it will receive unspecified royalties for every Android device that Samsung sells. Microsoft previously struck a similar patent deal with HTC, under which Microsoft is reportedly receiving $5 for every Android handset that HTC sells. This latest deal leaves Motorola Mobility, with which Microsoft is currently in litigation, as the only major Android smartphone manufacturer in the U.S. without a license to Microsoft's patent portfolio."
Legalized extortion is what this is. Patent reform is needed, and needed sooner rather than later.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
They didn't make android and sure as hell didn't make the Linux OS it runs it. Why is it that microsoft is able to extort money like this?
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Linux now officially belongs to Microsoft. Pay up.
Microsoft invented the file system used by many Android-powered devices to store data on SD cards, including a major enhancement released in 1995 that allowed file names to exceed the 8.3 limitation of early versions of this file system. This enhancement, commonly called "VFAT", is patented.
This is nothing more than a legalized protection racket.
Microsoft has made claims for years to own the patents on various aspects of Linux (which Android is built on), making only vague references and never specifying what exactly it owns. It then uses this to strongarm companies using Linux into paying them royalties.
The best part is that, unlike illegal protection rackets, this one is entirely supported by the broken patent (and legal) system we have today.
So shortly the wife and I will need 21st century phones. And apparently the only phone not involving payments to MS is the iphone. I refuse to buy an Samsung or HTC phone now and pay extortion even though I'd prefer Android.
U.S. Patent 5,758,352, filed in September 1996, won't expire until the fourth quarter of 2016.
What the article fails to mention is that Microsoft and Samsung came to a cross-licensing agreement. Microsoft isn't extorting Samsung like some replies above like to believe. In the deal, Microsoft is also licensing some patents from Samsung as well. It's just not made transparent.
No, they did not. There are very, very few real inventions that can be attributed to Microsoft. This is not one of them. VFAT is an "invention" in the same vain as a janitor is "inventing clean" via an application of a mop and a bucket of soapy water to a floor. The term, now apparently forgotten, that once used to describe why such things are not patentable is "an obvious application of the art"
So, as many people pointed out thousands of times:
Link to the petition to end software patents then. It's a small step but a step forward nevertheless.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Even that is far too much. Microsoft actually uses their patents in their products. Patent trolls don't have any kind of product to speak of.
How are we sure that the bulk of Microsoft's patent portfolio is pure garbage? They have quite an extensive research division and come up with some pretty novel concepts. That said, I think software patents in general are given for ideas that are far too simple, but I would hazard that MS is probably one of the few companies that have software patents I would actually qualify as being validly innovative and non-obvious. (Though I am sure they have a number of very obvious patents as well as you simply have to play the game to survive the way things are currently structured.)
AJ Henderson
Yeah because MS was making a shitload of software and hardware back in the 60:s when Samsung ventured into the electronics market... Or would the foundation of Microsoft full 15 years later in 1975 do something with that idea of yours?
You do have to remember that both HTC and Samsung sells hardware that runs Windows Mobile OS so they might not think it wise to litigate with a partner that they depend upon!