B&N Sought DoJ Inquiry Over Microsoft Patents

Meshach writes "There's an interesting story at the WSJ about how Barnes & Noble lobbied the Justice Department to open a new antitrust probe against Microsoft regarding their abuse of the patent system. B&N saw Microsoft filing a slew of frivolous patents in order to stop the development of handheld devices, potentially affecting their Nook reader. The article mentions how Microsoft has a similar racket going with various Android device manufacturers, but B&N does not have the cash reserves to support similar licensing, and is fighting back." Reader qantr points out related news: Chinese telecoms firm Huawei has confirmed that Microsoft is demanding royalty payments over products running Android.

Comments

Time to buy a Nook

[ozmanjusri]

Microsoft are nothing but vile patent trolls, screwing everybody, including their customers.

Support B&N with your wallets. Most of all, don't buy Microsoft products.

Re:Time to buy a Nook

[erroneus]

Say what you want about Microsoft (or Apple for that matter) but trolls they are not... at least not in the patent abuse sense of the word. They have been on the giving and receiving end of the game and while they "net benefit" from the system as it is, they have certainly been harmed in some measurable ways.

What they are doing, however, is using the patent system to supplement and maintain their income. I think proper references need to be cited on this, but I seem to recall something about how Microsoft is making more money from Android devices than they are from their own mobile hand-held devices. Microsoft isn't even trying to compete very hard, but they are making products for sale.

(In Apple's case, they seem to be using the system to keep their products on top... it's a perverted form of "competition" at least... very perverted)

Re:Time to buy a Nook

[Bert64]

For MS it's not about making money from Android, thats a side benefit... Their actual goal is to drive up the cost of Android and to dissuade companies from using it at all. Their end game is to get users locked into their platform instead.

Re:Time to buy a Nook

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please, Microsoft is every bit a patent troll as Apple is.
What the hell do you think this attack on Android is ? Party time ?
No one wants WP, no one cares a fuck about WP. So what does Microsoft do, instead of competing by improving WP they extort the competition in such a way as to make that shit of WP less costly than Android.
Microsoft is a criminal enterprise. They have been convicted in the past and it seems time has not changed their modus operandi. They need to be striked down and if the US won't do it then maybe the EU will be up to the task.
Mobile phone makers don't want the same situation of the pc space where Microsoft made all the profits and left mere cents to everybody else. They all learned (except Nokia). And since the market doesn't want WP what to do, what to do ? Sue everybody into submission. Way to go Microsoft, a shit company. Always was, always will be; Bill Gates or not Bill Gates at the helm.

Re:Time to buy a Nook

[Anonymous Coward]

Forced incompatibility is anti-competitive, microsoft should be fined and a consent decree issued to correct the fraudulent behaviour

Re:Time to buy a Nook

[peppepz]

Abusing a ridiculous patent about "long file names" to extort money from people who are using that technique only to provide interoperability with their monopolist OS looks much like patent trolling to me - the difference is that they do have a product, which the market rejected, implementing that feature, unlike typical patent trolls. But the intentions and the result are the same.

Google, for example, are playing in the same game and by the same rules: they buy patents and pay licenses, but I haven't seen them using their patent portfolio for offensive purposes yet.

Re:Time to buy a Nook

[TubeSteak]

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

In this game, we allow the players to design the rules.
It's pretty much a recipe for disaster.

I'm Glad

[sunr2007]

that B &N is showing MS that they have balls which other big companies like Samsung , HTC din't. It doesnt matter whether B & N succeed or not atleast they have shown the intent to fight Troll called MS. This could be the next David Vs Goliath fight.

Re:I'm Glad

[Xest]

The problem for companies like Samsung and HTC is that because they are American companies they suffer greatly in US courts as frankly American courts are extremely biased towards American companies, presumably stemming from it's national disease of over the top patriotism and general high levels of xenophobia. That's not to say this is always the case, but if you're a foreign company going up against a US firm in US courts, then the odds are stacked far more greatly against you than say a foreign company fighting a native firm in Canadian, or European courts which is again not to say it doesn't happen there too - just not so frequently.

It's no coincidence really that the firms that have folded against Microsoft are the foreign ones, and the ones fighting it are the American ones - Google, Motorola, B&N. If you want a slice of America's consumer pie, you have to accept that you'll play second place to American companies.

Other industries have been used to this for decades- you only have to ask companies like Airbus and BP about that, or any of the companies that led to complaints against the US via the WTO which have resulted in rulings against the US but which the US has chosen to completely ignore be it lumber from Canada or cotton from Brazil, but with the patent war hotting up it's becoming a painful reality for the mobile industry now too.

Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

What they're doing is avoiding a lawsuit against Google, and instead going after licensees of Android. If they went after Google, Google would fight it and thus reveal the origin of the inventions they are claiming.

They come to some arrangement, which looks like it's really a fake agreement (e.g. you pay us $45 million, and we pay you $45 million back in marketing and discounts - which is what the Samsung deal is rumoured to be). They they present the payment to them as a license fee for Android to create a false cost associated with Android.

All done under NDA so the details of the fraud are not revealed and investors are kept in the dark.

Re:Let's see how schizophrenic the government is

[MrHanky]

Depends. Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, and if the patents in this case are needed to stay interoperable with the Windows environment, and the fees demanded border to extortion (i.e. the product is no longer competitive with Microsoft's product), then I suspect the DOJ might find that interesting.

The problem is...

[WindBourne]

the android companies that have caved into MS and paid them. Hopefully B&N and Google/Motorola will win out over MS, while those companies that signed with MS will be forced to continue paying.

Re:Let's see how schizophrenic the government is

[SuricouRaven]

And in ten years, once Microsoft has destroyed Android and taken over it's place in the market for billions in revenue, the case might finally finish winding through the courts. We've been here with Netscape. Legal action runs at a snail's pace compared to most industries - but in the fast-moving world of technology, it's glacial.

Re:From another article

[Locutus]

Did you know they both sell products which run Microsoft Windows? Do you think they might talk about how those licensing fees would go up sharply if they were not to play this Android game. Seeing how they _require_ an NDA before even telling the vendors what patents are being infringed, these kinds of contracts only get exposed in court documents or leaked.

So that is just a couple of ways Microsoft strong arms companies the size of Samsung or General Dynamics. And don't forget, Microsoft strong armed Intel into shutting down a software division they were running which did Java and multimedia software. It's pretty well known by the older geeks how Microsoft got its market and has kept its market and it was not because they competed on product quality. IMO

LoB

Re:From another article

[Xest]

"I figure there actually has to be something substantial in those patents to merit virtually all the big names in Android phones agreeing to license them at the amount MIcrosoft has been asking."

Agreed, IMO the issue at hand isn't whether Microsoft has valid patents, I think it very likely does else firms would be less likely to sign agreements with it, I think the issue is that Microsoft is abusing NDAs and so forth to prevent anyone telling the world what the patents are so that they can re-write software to not infringe on Microsoft's payments.

Effectively Microsoft is doing it's best to encourage continued infringement so that people have to license. IMO that should be grounds to lose rights to a patent - you should either be open about infringement and give people the opportunity to avoid it or license it, or lose the right to the patent altogether, not trap people into infringing and then force them to pay up. That really is protection racket type tactics.

Re:One need only look at the patents

[Raenex]

Both parties interested in talking want the NDA.

If you feel you're being shaken down for money, signing an NDA doesn't benefit you. Would you sign an NDA with an extortionist?