Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Sues Motorola Over Mapping Patents
jfruh writes "The mobile patent wars continue, with two of the world's biggest tech companies about to blunder into direct conflict. Microsoft holds a number of patents that it claims give it rights over mobile map applications that overlay data from multiple databases (map info from one database and store location info from another, for instance). Many Android vendors already pay Redmond licensing fees for their mapping apps; now Redmond is going to court in Germany to sue one of the holdouts: Motorola Mobility, which is of course owned by Google."
Owners of "Sore losers" patent pool.
839*929
This solution will help companies that are being sued.
Let them just remove the "offending features", then allow users to reinstall them via a "special software update". They do not have to be responsible for the software update or the software itself...heck, they are not Apple. Then let's see who these folks in Microsoft's camp will sue.
This solution would be very ideal in a case such as Apple's so called 'rubber-band patent' and many others. How about that?
Owners of the "why innovate when we can just rip-off someone else" research and development team.
> map applications that overlay data from multiple databases
Sounds blatantly obvious to someone skilled in the art...
Not that I'm surprised. To some extent, I think the patent wars are going in the second-best direction: towards total destruction of everybody in the technology business in the US. Once everything is dead on the ground, picked over by European or (gasp!) Chinese companies for scraps, maybe then the morons employing lobbyists and buying out politicians will come to their senses.
I can always dream.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I've got a solution for the whole shebang. Sue the USPTO every time a court rules they issued a bad patent - it's they who screw up the most, after all. Pretty soon they'll have no money left and will either shut down or will make each patent application a 100 million dollars.
...if every single patent lawsuit regarding mobile phones was thrown out.
Imagine how much better the phone in your pocket would be if companies were forced to actually make efforts to improve their phone instead of worsening the competition.
Fuck all of you companies who hire more lawyers than employees.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
wow, you're a genius! no one's ever thought of that before.
``Circumstantial proof that the person accused of inducing infringement knew of the patent, and knew that his or her activities would lead to infringement of the patent is generally sufficient to establish the requisite intent.''
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Does anyone know why two American companies are suing each other in Germany? Are these German patents?
And why bother suing in Germany when the US courts apparently think that they have jurisdiction in Germany too.
As soon as someone sells hardware along with the software, software patents turn into hardware patents and then you can sue even in Europe. It's magic!
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
> map applications that overlay data from multiple databases
Sounds blatantly obvious to someone skilled in the art...
Microsoft Engineer 1: Jesus, dude look at this, look at this idea I had! ... ... what if -- and stay with me here -- what if we pulled map data from two different databases. ... what you're talking about would require something like ... ... no, wait, even then we've only got one database connection in the code. That's it, from there you're stuck, you'd have to send both the prepared statements to the database ... unless ... wait, hold the phone ... unless you had ...
Microsoft Engineer 2: I don't get it, what am I looking at here, this C# code is light years beyond my comprehension.
Microsoft Engineer 1: I know, right? But here, let me step you through it. You remember how we were pulling data from one database and displaying it?
Microsoft Engineer 2: Yeah, that itself is, like, on par with the gods
Microsoft Engineer 1: Right right but it got me to thinking
Microsoft Engineer 2: No way dude, that's impossible. Look, we use one prepared statement here to get the data
Microsoft Engineer 1: Two prepared statements?
Microsoft Engineer 2: Oh. My. God. It could work
Microsoft Engineer 1: Two database connections?
Microsoft Engineer 2: *starts shaking his hands in the air excitedly* Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, this is going to be a game changer. We better tell Ballmer -- quick, get the patent officers on the phone, this is fuckin' huge!
My work here is dung.
This solution will help companies that are being sued.
Let them just remove the "offending features", then allow users to reinstall them via a "special software update". They do not have to be responsible for the software update or the software itself...heck, they are not Apple. Then let's see who these folks in Microsoft's camp will sue.
This solution would be very ideal in a case such as Apple's so called 'rubber-band patent' and many others. How about that?
Well, as pointed out by retchdog, that may not be good enough.
However, on the same track, could they offer the "updates" as paid options that cost exactly the amount that Apple/MS/fill-in-the-blank-patent-holder requires for licensing?
Basically, allow Android users to "buy" features from Apple?
Man, reading that back to myself makes me sad that we live in an age where this kind of thing is a problem. How much farther would we be right now without the tech-smothering patent system in our way. Things could be so much better.
This won't fly. "Special software updates" have been around for a very long time. In fact, Apple's rubber-banding patent can still be put in place on non iOS phones as I write this.
The party that would be sued does not have to do anything. Updates are being done now to enable so many features that would otherwise be problematic out of the box.
Remember, wer're talking about open source software here.
redmond to sue Apple in germany failed when upon arriving to court, a panick stricken international phonecall from an attorney in Hamburg Pennsylvania demanded the case be held in France instead as it was easier to dispatch international attorneys.
two weeks later, Apples French legal team stormed into a child support hearing in Paris Arkansas looking for answers...
Good people go to bed earlier.
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000115
uh-huh, sure. on the one hand there is the letter of the law, and on the other hand is a fallacious induction.
the only reason they haven't swatted down this scheme is because linux doesn't pose enough of a threat to justify it (and, for some companies, it may even be at least indirectly helpful). if and when it does, however, i hope there are enough pooled free patents to enable the MAD strategy.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
I think a better solution is strip all IP lawyers of citizenship, declare them problem animals, and allow the open hunting of them, with a $200 bounty for every intact business suit.
That would solve pretty much the entire problem in about a month.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
However, on the same track, could they offer the "updates" as paid options that cost exactly the amount that Apple/MS/fill-in-the-blank-patent-holder requires for licensing?
That would be fun. Just imagine what the app store would look like:
Apple iBoooing: $1
Microsoft Your Map As It Should Be: $1
Amazon ONE Click, Not TWO: $1
Motorola CALLR - Your phone, able to call other phones!: $1
It'd be amazing. In a creepy, distopian way. But amazing nevertheless.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Yeah, that's a better idea.
You might want to go look up what the ND stands for in FRAND.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Is fast approaching, and the entire tech industry will collapse under the weight of mutually exclusive patents.
Only the attorneys will be working at that point.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I think a better solution is strip all IP lawyers of citizenship, declare them problem animals, and allow the open hunting of them, with a $200 bounty for every intact business suit.
That would solve pretty much the entire problem in about a month.
What does it say about a society where the number of lawyers vastly outnumbers that of doctors ?
Fucking parasites, they are nothing but a drain on society.
Fuck me, but what an idea. Where do I sign up and how long is the waiting list already?
Wait, who? Oh, it's not them this time? OK. Carry on.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
PJ from Groklaw:
...then one day, in what in those days was called America, that's right Xhen-Lou Stevenson, when there were individual countries, each with its own warring government, there were things called corporations. These were groups of people who conspired to rob everyone else of their money and try o make them homeless and hungry. Yes, Unbootoo Greenberg, they still imagined little pieces of paper were worth something. So... These corporations pretended to own ideas and used these things called courts to punish people and each other as a tactic to see who could acquire the greatest number of these little bits of paper.. the bit of paper that had written on it who owned a certain idea was called a patent.
Why no, most knowledge wasn't free in that time, people mostly went along with the idea that knowledge belonged to certain people, even though the people who did the research were able to do so using the education provided for FREE by the general public. It's a mystery we still don't understand today. but perhaps one day you children here today will be able to unravel what precipitated the Great Collapse of 2013. What you choose to do with your education is up to you, it's a decision you'll have to make for yourselves...
Is it a Microsoft patent? Or a Nokia patent which they had stolen through the trojan horse Elop?
we're all in violation as far as i can tell ...
Microsoft patented GIS? Colour me surprised, I thought that started somewhere around the second half of the 18th century... on paper maps back then, but still... data, from multiple sources, overlayed on maps.
--frank[at]unternet.org