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Microsoft Now Collects Royalties From Over Half of All Android Devices
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has inked a deal with Compal Electronics, which pumps out gadgets that run Android and Chrome OS, for an undisclosed sum."
Microsoft has an explanatory weblog post; with this deal over half of all Android devices are licensing patents from Microsoft. Notably refusing to cooperate and instead opting for the court battle route are Motorola and Barnes and Noble.
I guess it's more cost-effective to shakedown directly than using SCO as a proxy.
I cant help drawing parallels to the Novell agreement where Microsoft in practice paid Novell hefty sums to keep going in Microsofts direction, focusing on MS technologies and products.
Would anyone except Nokia keep churning WP7 phones out when it still, one year after release has not gotten more than 0,3% of the market? I strongly suspect Samsung, HTC etc in reality gets paid for using WP7 and dont pay a dime to use Android. Ofcourse on paper they pay Microsoft for licenses, but then they get that money and ten times more back in the form of marketing contributions for WP7.
Just as with Novell that is.
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Fairly good article explaing the Royalties: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/10/microsoft-collects-license-fees-on-50-of-android-devices-tells-google-to-wake-up.ars
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Quote:"Microsoft didn’t specifically reference that post, but today said “For those who continue to protest that the smartphone patent thicket is too difficult to navigate, it’s past time to wake up.” Microsoft doesn’t just collect money from other companies, it also pays out plenty to protect itself, Microsoft’s legal team notes.
“Over the past decade we’ve spent roughly $4.5 billion to license in patents from other companies,” Microsoft said. “These have given us the opportunity to build on the innovations of others in a responsible manner that respects their IP rights. Equally important, we've stood by our customers and partners with countless agreements that contain the strongest patent indemnification provisions in our industry. These ensure that if our software infringes someone else's patents, we'll address the problem rather than leave it to others.”
MS may be making money off other peoples' work, but look at what this picture is telling us. Manufacturers would rather pay MS to not use their windows OSes. That's pretty damning!
I guess I am going Apple
Or because they had plenty patents of their own and cross-licensed for peanuts. Or just got a good deal. Many patent trolls will give out the first licenses for next to nothing, then try to shake down the rest claiming the rest of the industry has licensed it. We'll see when it comes to court how real their claims are.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Why is Google silent in this matter? Now before you mod me down, I know Google have made some inconsequential comments. These have not helped at all.
Dicalimer: I am not a lawyer.
If I were Google, I would file a some lawsuit to 'force' Microsoft to reveal the patents that Android is infringing on, or force Microsoft not to mention the word Android in its licensing propaganda.
My suspicions of what is really going on:
1: Microsoft approaches an Android OEM with a 'sweet deal' relating to Android.
2: Microsoft pays the OEM some cash and a deal is struck that results in the OEM saying no word about the deal, but allows Microsoft to spread FUD.
On major OEMs like Samsung, the deal could be about future android based products that would envisage incorporating Microsoft technology (which actually exists and is interesting).
You wonder why the other party says nothing at all about the licensing. But the major thing about all this is the silence of Google.
What Google could do in addition, is to modify the non GPL portions of Android and add language that specifically prohibits licensees from entering into licensing deals like the ones Microsoft touts if they are going to be party to Microsoft's FUD.
Here's the worry: It might backfire!
Smaller companies may well end up paying more even if they win.
Corporate lawyers are pretty good at estimating the success of this sort of thing. Microsoft will probably offer to settle at some point, but have to carry this through a certain way because a threat of a lawsuit is worthless if you aren't seen to be willing to carry it out.
Notice how concepts such as justice and who's actually in the right don't come into this...
Does anyone else find it ironic that the broken U.S. patent system, and by extension, the broken U.S. government, along with some good-old boy corporate nepotism, is leading us right back to the old Microsoft/Apple duopoly? No more webOS, no more Meego, RIM is on the ropes and Android looks to be next.
Who looses? The customer.
:T:R:A:N:S:
It is in any country without software patents. Well, some versions of it, at least - Honeycomb is mostly proprietary.
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Google can't do anything about the FAT patent that everyone has to use for card storage. Consumers expect to be able to pull the SD card from a device and have it usable in something else without having to worry about file system drivers. FAT is the defacto standard for memory cards today.
The industry fell asleep on this one, when they should have all worked together to create a license and royalty free open spec file system. The blew it and are now paying the price, well, we the consumer is paying the price.
Microsoft are winning this game, they always have been. They will pillage the open source market and as many markets as they can and squeeze it for every cent. yes Android is pseudo open source, but it's less closed that the ms offering or apples bastardisation of bsd.
Freedom isn't as shiny as Apple or Microsoft and it's not as glamorous. Sure if that's what you choose, then go ahead, but as actual day to day user of open source software on my desktop I feel that choice is slowly being taken away from me. How long, I wonder, before I can't run an approved software stack on a motherboard at home?
I see a slow convergence of Microsoft strategies. I don't ever think they will go away, but I wish they would stop trying to impose their will on my choices. Everywhere you turn there is Microsoft throwing its weight around, cementing its monopoly. They are the MacDonalds of Information Technology.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
If companies that use it have to pay for licences it's not free in either sense.
And it's not about hardware, it's about software. It's about Android.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/070611-microsoft-android.html
Folks at Pubat claim the patent was rejected.
Microsoft's patents are on the devices, not the Android OS.
Wrong.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/070611-microsoft-android.html
Basil, take it from me, it's always best to wait and think before hitting Submit.
Funnily enough that would be my advice to you Ratzo. Do you feel stupid now?
Also not paying is Sony Ericsson:
http://www.xperiablog.net/2011/10/04/sony-ericsson-is-%E2%80%9Cpatent-safe%E2%80%9D-according-to-ceo/
I guess if the cellphone manufacturers aren't willing to run Microsoft's mobile OS on their devices, Microsoft will just have to start acting like all the other patent trolls that don't make viable products either.
Whether apple innovate is also questionable. They produce very good gadgets and they polish them very very well, but there's not a huge amount that they've done that is truly innovative. iPod was just a well polished MP3 player of which there were many before them. iPhone was nothing new (all-touchscreen had been done by LG prada before iPhone was released) iPad was a merging of their iPhone and tablet computers (which MS had been trying (and failing) to generate a mass-market in about 10 years previous) macbooks - flashy and well engineered, but not particularly innovative. Siri was a bought-in component that they merged into the latest phone. OK, I'll give you multitouch for them, but the point is that not everything that comes out of Infinite Loop is innovative. Very good and well designed, yes, but don't preach to them as the Gods of Innovation. They do find good innovators in the market and then copy-and-improve them or buy them outright to incorporate into their engineering team.
Yeah, that's not hard to do when MS gives you your Android protection fee money back as incentive.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Not having the best day - misread TFA and a typo. This is why I mostly just read Slashdot.