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

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.

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.

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: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

[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: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