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Microsoft, IBM Want to Seal Patents Agreements With Samsung
sfcrazy writes "The court battle between Apple and Samsung has created the possibility of disclosing the cross patent agreement between Microsoft and Samsung. Microsoft is suddenly scared and has filed a motion asking the court to seal the cross license agreement. I would like to remind that the Judge has asked both parties to make all the filings in this dispute available to the public for free."
And on Monday, IBM filed for a restraining order to prevent Reuters from publishing their agreement with Samsung as well.
Wait, what now? Slashdot's summaries are starting to get quite childish. Microsoft is scared, really?
It couldn't even barely be possible that Microsoft wants to follow the mobile companies common practice of cross licensing almost all of their patents.
This includes one of the pioneers of mobile industry, Nokia, as well as they could stop licensing their technology and make the other companies really suffer. But the armchair generals and armchair CEO's on Slashdot think everything is outright war between technology companies. In fact it's not.
no wonder the schills defend samsung so much! microsoft has something to lose!
By the end of this, the whole landscape is going to look very different. Hard to say how exactly, but everyone aware of the licensing between each other could lead to some hilarious later complaints 'hey, wait, you're charging us this much, and them HOW much?!??!" That IBM 'accidentally' sent the full version of the license to Reuters, and then went 'oops'... Wonder if it was an accidentally on purpose. They may be feeling that their part of the deal isn't as good as they'd have liked. And of course, Microsoft is never happy when their business practices are opened to scrutiny. This Apple vs Samsung court time now is going to keep being repeated, both in appeals, and other companies getting upset with each other. Apple's certainly caused some serious havoc in the phone business, wonder if this was the levels they imagined. As always, no matter who wins (this stage), we all lose cool tech. Wish they'd just sorted it out amongst themselves with reasonable licensing fees.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
Which he does very well indeed.
However, I doubt any of it is much of a brake on real technical progress. The limitation on that, at the moment, is battery technology. And that has been the limitation on mobile technical progress since the first mobile phones.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
No, Microsoft has released details of the claimed license, by Samsung of its 'Android patents'. But leaks came out that Sammy would get 'marketing money' back from Microsoft, and lo and behold they did.
Here's Microsoft and their fake claim to IP rights over Android:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15106889
Here's money back from MS to Samsung:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/16/2050244/microsoft-pays-44-million-to-samsung-and-nokia-for-mango-marketing
Now suddenly they want the real details sealed? Yet they were keen to claim it was a patent license for IP claims over Android!
MSFT Investors need to wonder what the truth is here, because Samsung doesn't mind the unsealing, but yet MS does? But MS were the ones making the public claim, not Samsung!!
Why? I really don't understand what they are afraid of
If you're expecting the state to pay because you throw your toys out of the pram then everything should be made public.
Don't want your dirty laundry aired in public, then either grow up or pay an independent arbitrator to make the decision. What is it with people wanting to eat their cake and have it too?
Now both M$ and IBM have filed petition to the court in asking that patent agreement between them and Samsung be sealed
Pardon me, but I do not understand
Patents are there to protect the patent holder - and patents are supposed to be OPEN TO THE PUBLIC so that the public at large know to what extend a particular patent covers and in what way the patent is considered as "novel" when it was granted
Patents that are sealed under court order only mean one thing - that they, the patent holder(s) do not want the public at large to know the existence of their patents.
If that is the case - then their patents might as well be void - because if the public at large can't know about their patents, the public wouldn't know when, of if, they have infringed on their patents
What M$ is doing - particularly, hiding patents from the public view - should be declared illegal by the court
If a patent holder wants to hide their patent, they should not be granted that particular patent, period
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
...IBM's motion to prevent Reuters from publishing what IBM gave them has been denied already. Those of a conspiracy turn of mind will now cue the old boy network where IBM execs get together with Reuter's execs at the Old Boys Club and work out what Reuters gets for not publishing after all.
Reuters may gleefully print the whole thing, but that seems unlikely. More likely they'll excerpt it anyway, even without any alleged backroom deals.
I know I know, I read TFA. I'm sorry... it won't happen again.
In my opinion they don't want to keep only the public from viewing these agreements, they want the other corporate partners not to know the details, because they could use it to renegotiate the terms.
Imagine this hypothetical situation:
Microsoft has an agreement both with Sony and with Apple. They both agreed on different but confidential patent agreements.
Sony paid (or swapped) more than Apple.
Apple releases their agreement.
Sony sees this and has a reason to renegotiate.
Since patents are public, any licensing agreements should also be public. These NDAs and backroom deals are so wrong.
Norland nannies (the expensive, highly trained ones) like them. When I was a small child it used to amuse me to watch them pushing them around St. James's Park or the Serpentine with their small, but usually titled, occupants.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Among those "Monopolistic business practices" must be included "Using the USPTO as a barrier to trade by allowing trivial patents by large corporations and making it prohibitively expensive for small companies to oppose them in court". The US patent system is now designed to achieve the exact opposite of its original goals, just as in the late 2000s the credit ratings agencies were gamed so as to give good ratings to junk debt, at the instigation of the banks, thus doing the exact opposite of what investors imagined.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
in a word, yes. Or as other sites say "Microsoft's hair is on fire". (as noted elsewhere)
Microsoft wants to keep their patent settlements high and the risk of DOJ investigations low. They have a lot of negative press awaiting if their shakedowns are mae public. Also on groklaw: "IBM's motion has been denied [PDF] by the magistrate judge. Reuters gets to publish" So it appears that an IBM agreement will be able to be published.
Pretty much the second big companies that have questionable settlements are made public, all of this patent shakedown stuff goes away in it's entirety as it no longer remains profitable. A little sunlight can go a long way.
Anyway, the IBM motion has already been denied. If IBM can't get it, there's a fair chance Microsoft won't, either.
One of the big reasons this is interesting is that we might finally find out exactly what patents Microsoft thinks that Linux violates.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
microSCO: Linux is violating x amount of my patents ...
Court: Lets see 'em
microSCO: Can't, they're covered by a NDA
If they are not doing anything wrong then they have nothing to hide?
Isn't that the way it's always said?
Conspiracy? My fav quotes on conspiracy come from a the man who “wrote the book” on the subject after busting up enough of them to master all the tricks for his own use.
"It can be held certain that information that is withheld or
suppressed contains truths that are detrimental to the
persons involved in the suppression"
-- J. Edgar Hoover
"The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with
a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists"
-- J. Edgar Hoover
They're afraid to show that someone who has the resources to fight them gets sweetheart deals, effectively resulting in no financial penalty, or even benefitting the "violating" company - because it'll start to become clear and undeniable that they practice extortion against companies that DON'T have the resources to take on a legal battle. If it was all above board, they wouldn't mind releasing exact info about what patents are involved, and at least the general financial terms (while possibly withholding the exact amounts, for legitimate reason).
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh