Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Wins US Import Ban On Motorola's Android Devices
jbrodkin writes "The U.S. International Trade Commission today ordered an import ban on Motorola Mobility Android products, agreeing with Microsoft that the devices infringe a Microsoft patent on 'generating meeting requests' from a mobile device. The import ban stems from a December ruling that the Motorola Atrix, Droid, and Xoom (among 18 total devices) infringed the patent, which Microsoft says is related to Exchange ActiveSync technology. Today, the ITC said in a 'final determination of violation' (PDF) that 'the appropriate form of relief in this investigation is a limited exclusion order prohibiting the unlicensed entry for consumption of mobile devices, associated software and components thereof covered by ... United States Patent No. 6,370,566 and that are manufactured abroad by or on behalf of, or imported by or on behalf of, Motorola.' Motorola (which is being acquired by Google) was the last major Android device maker not to pay off Microsoft in a patent licensing deal. Microsoft has already responded to the decision, saying it hopes Motorola will now reconsider."
Here's the patent in question:
http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=L-ELAAAAEBAJ&dq=6,370,566
The present invention includes a mobile device which provides the user with the ability to schedule a meeting request from the mobile device itself. The mobile device creates an object representative of the meeting request and assigns the object a global identification number which uniquely identifies the object to other devices which encounter the object. In addition, the mobile device in accordance with one aspect of the present invention provides a property in the object which is indicative of whether the meeting request has already been transmitted. In this way, other devices which encounter the meeting request are capable of identifying it as a unique meeting request, and of determining whether the meeting request has already been transmitted, in order to alleviate the problem of duplicate meeting request transmissions.
Is that really patentable? Assigning a unique ID to a meeting request to alleviate duplicate requests? How can that not be obvious to someone "skilled in the art"?
Is there any other solution that's more obvious? "Hey Joe, I keep getting duplicate meeting requests from your Palm Pilot. Oh noooooos! Hey, I know, I'll send each meeting request in a different color, then if you get two purple ones you'll know it's a dupe".
Better yet, it is so vague that probably every laptop and table is also in violation of it, well every laptop and tablet not running Windows (ie Apple). My old palm pilot is also probably in violation, too.
I would have thought a ruling by a judge would be needed to render something banned from import. So the power to regulate allows government agencies the ability to make profound and legally binding decisions without need for court systems or due process? I was not aware the ITC were experts on IP.
They're not, and you're right ... they just ban stuff because a lawyer makes a convincing argument to a bureaucrat who hasn't the slightest idea of what the subject matter is, or how it relates to the product class in question. This will still go to court, and ultimately I suspect the ban will be lifted. The ITC is where everyone goes to get fast action without any court time.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Roll that around in your brain for a second.
I really wonder why anyone would have one bit of respect for any intellectual property laws when they are being perverted in this way.
And they wonder why there is hostility toward our current economic system. Maybe it's because the people at the top of that system have completely broken the social contract.
Between this story and the notion that Facebook, a corporation that produces nothing, employs almost nobody, and whose users are not their customers is now worth >$100billion, and the fact that the young founder of Facebook is has greater net worth than the bottom 1/5th (!) of the entire US population, I think a picture of an economic system in its death throes starts to take shape. I can't see how it can last much longer, nor can I think of a reason why it should.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Its not.
"Government agencies" have very little in terms of inherent power. What they do have is the power conferred on them by Congress acting under its Article I powers, which often include the ability to make decisions of first instance in certain controversies. Due process is required in such proceedings by the 5th Amendment.
These decisions are, generally, subject to review, sometimes by special courts set up for review of agency decisions (Article I courts), and -- either initially or subsequently -- by the regular (Article III) courts.
Since their role is narrower than that of, say, the regular federal trial courts, and IP is specifically central to it, there's far more reason to expect that the ITC members are IP experts than that the federal judges and juries that would hear cases in Article III courts would be.
Story - Microsoft Wins US Import Ban On Motorola's Android Devices - Posted by Soulskill on Friday May 18, @05:38PM .
First comment praising Microsoft - a properly worded, properly paragraphed, properly punctuated, comment, with a link with description - all of this taking up a 100 words not including punctuation - Posted by kdps (2642743) on Friday May 18, @05:38PM .
That's certainly a good reason to ban a product. That's all I use my phone for!
Use it while you still can. Next in line, Google and Apple dusting off some of their patents and banning each others phones, including the MS one.
Getting around the bans will be possible: except the smart phones won't be that smart anymore, each one will need to eliminate the "smartness" covered by the patents of the others.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Let's look at what Microsoft won and lost here.
Eight of the nine patents in suit are rendered useless. As soon as the last one is worked around, nine of nine. Everybody will work now to avoid these litigious patents. Microsoft's licensing strategy is to not reveal the patents at all because they can be worked around.
They don't get the $15 per device license fees, in perpetuity, they wanted.
Moto has to pay $0.33 per device, and only on the few devices found to infringe, and might actually get that money back if they bother to try. But regardless they save $14.67 per device - and that's just starting now. They don't pay any back money for prior devices.
Moto and Google have probably already worked around this patent and the cure is in testing. Once it's applied the net cost to Moto goes back to zero until the next time.
By successfully suing Moto for using Microsoft's patented Exchange API, they've recommitted to a course of prevention of interopability in a core Office product some had claimed was behind them. Way to go! We get to bring this up every time someone tries to say things have changed, or you should use some Microsoft technology and it will be OK (Mono, C#, and so on).
They don't get to cross-license Moto patents, ever. Moto has a LOT of patents.
Moto gets to be bitter and sue them back over every single thing they can, like H.264 patents, wireless patents and so on. Microsoft has to drop the DVD codecs from Windows 8, for example.
Everybody else who's paying Microsoft for Android gets to see that it is more economical to fight than to pay. Moto gets a $15 per device cost advantage on their Android devices, the better to compete with.
In return Microsoft may have earned the princely sum of One MILLION dollars, less lawyer expenses. (Based on 3 million devices imported before the issue is sorted out.)
Way to go guys! That's how you win in the digital age. Keep doing stuff like this and you'll earn your just reward.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
That's not entirely a fair statement. Most companies are founded by people with knowledge or skills specific to the companies core product so generally speaking the first outside person they hire is going to be someone who has skills they don't have, a lot of times that's going to be someone in admin as opposed to a lawyer, but I'd be seriously surprised to find many software companies whose first employee was a developer.