Judge Invalidates 13 Motorola Patent Claims Against Microsoft

walterbyrd writes "Microsoft scored a victory against Google-owned Motorola Mobility this week after a judge scrapped 13 of the latter party's patent claims in a years-long dispute over H.264-related royalties. Waged in U.S. and German courts, the battle involves three patents (7,310,374, 7,310,375, and 7,310,376) that Motorola licenses to Microsoft for several products, including the Xbox 360, Windows and Windows Phone. PJ is commenting on the case over at Groklaw.net."

Comments

Christ...

[Frosty Piss]

This is good. No, it's bad. No, its good. Wait, no, it's bad. Is Apple involved? It's bad. No it's good⦠Jesus, who the fuck knows. As a fanboi, what the fuck am I to do?

Re:Christ...

[AK Marc]

Lawful or chaotic neutral? We are still lost.

A humble suggestion to tech companies:

[lxs]

Just a simple plan to help you survive these times of financial strife.

1. Stop wasting money on lawyers.
2. Start making quality products.
3. ??? (actually you can skip this step)
4. profit.

Re:A humble suggestion to tech companies:

[maxwell demon]

The way to end that war is to take away the sharp sticks from everyone involved.

Re:A humble suggestion to tech companies:

[rtfa-troll]

1a. Stop wasting money on patent based acquisitions.

This entire war was started by Apple and Microsoft setting out to block other companies from exactly the strategy the grandparent post proposed and who were exactly failing to buy patents. Microsoft's stupid FAT patents; Apple's stupid "rounded corners" design patents; patents on obvious gestures in a user interface. The companies which were trying the strategy of "just give the consumer what they want" were being sued to hell. The lawyers were making it very clear that if you attempt to opt out of the patents protection racket then their friends, the judges, will make you pay more than you can afford.

At one point, it looked as if Microsoft might honestly have frightened the device manufacturers away from Android. Spineless companies like HTC rolled over and let Microsoft tickle their tummy. Only after Google started acquiring large patent portfolios did some of those manufacturer's get a bit of guts. HTC, on the other hand, will likely never recover.

If you look at the history of this, it's very clear that Google is only succeeding by buying their way through the US legal system. It's very hard then to argue that their investment in "patent based acquisitions" was a waste of money. Just like a certain level of bribery is the cost of doing business in Russia and your people may die if you don't pay it, in the corrupt US justice system you have to be seen to be paying your protection money to the patent barons.

Re:A humble suggestion to tech companies:

[maxwell demon]

It's a government-uttered spell which makes the sticks sharp. If the government utters the counter-spell, the sticks stop being sharp.

Re:A humble suggestion to tech companies:

[Rockoon]

HTC's problems werent from Microsoft.. HTC was the target of the opening salvo of mobile patent lawsuits, initiated by Apple.

When the first wave of the mobile lawsuit armageddon geared up, the three companies distinctly absent from either end of these lawsuits were Google, Palm, and Microsoft (citation.)

To accuse Microsoft of being somehow a big offender is ignoring the history of these battles. Patent lawsuits wasn't how Microsoft operated, and to a large extent still isn't because nearly every lawsuit that targets Microsoft or is initiated by Microsoft ends in a (cross)licensing deal rather than a judgment and that includes Microsoft taking the short end of it (ex: licensing from Acacia Research.)

I do understand that Microsoft is one of the only companies that have gone after Linux, and its probably unforgivable, but that doesnt make them one of the big offenders in mobile patent lawsuits. Making that claim just doesnt hold up to reality.

Bullshit Headline Again

[mdm42]

The patents were *not* invalidated.

Some claims within the patents were invalidated.

Go RTFA.

A Judge did?

[MrDoh!]

If a Judge (not a Jury) can invalidate Patent claims (are they THAT skilled in the science of these things?) then what the heck's the Patent Office for?
Is there any point in lodging a complaint to the Patent Office, when a Judge appears to be able to do it quicker, and knows the parties involved?
So in future, don't waste time with going the usual route, just get a Judge to decide on complex matters, and then the Patent Office, now with more time on it's hands, can start ruling in criminal trials.
What a mess.

No, that's good news for corporations

[SuperKendall]

For Apple, and the rest of the corporate world, it's bad news, because it seems it's getting harder and harder to use patents as weapons.

For Apple it's great news.

No Apple lawsuit has had any real effect to date. The biggest one is a not negligible 1 billion dollar payout by Samsung - but that's not even certain yet.

So by with all these patents folding like a house of cards, it saves Apple a lot of money that would otherwise go to "fruitless" lawsuits.

Basically corporations (not just Apple) kind of have to sue to protect patents. It''s like a legal reflex. With that need removed, they will spend less on litigation.

Apple (and other companies) have done just fine competing in a world where companies are making using of technologies patented by the other side. So the weak patents being thrown out will have no impact.

Microsoft undoing their own patents?

[jkflying]

Microsoft is arguing that as a 'means plus function' patent, it isn't specific enough because it doesn't specifically give an algorithm. Surely if this goes through it will invalidate the vast majority of software patents?

Re:Microsoft undoing their own patents?

[gnasher719]

Microsoft is arguing that as a 'means plus function' patent, it isn't specific enough because it doesn't specifically give an algorithm. Surely if this goes through it will invalidate the vast majority of software patents?

It's not really about an algorithm per se. It's about specifying precisely what the algorithm is going to achieve. "Pick some block using some algorithm" isn't specific enough. "Pick some block using the following algorith: blablabla" is. "Pick some block by choosing among all blocks with distance less than 5 units the one that minimises the prediction error defined by the formula xxx" is specific enough, even if the implementor has to find their own algorithm.

Trouble on screen for all who write software.

[Anonymous Coward]

Software patents are so problematic because if you expose your essential algorithm which uses code blocks then all someone has to do is code to it with different variable names.

It is the same problem as why technology stagnated during the times before the renaissance and then industrial revolution, methods were kept secret by guilds.

We are placing far too much monetary value upon "the intellectual property of software" and if too much software is granted "a Royal Monopoly" like status. Because that status can then be horded we are headed for a technological dark age.

Who can blame the Chinese for employing industrial espionage when much of the technology they seek to achieve is being bartered by those who would squirrel it away in medieval style corporate guilds.

Queen Elizabeth the First at the end of her reign had the foresight to abolish the monopolies, we are reversing the trend and it will eventually cause stagnation and strife in the advancement of technology if left unchecked to run amok. The same as the imaginary mortgage security products market did to us all.

We either open up the patent system and let the best engineers and manufactures win or have a bunch of coders at desks trading ideas for imaginary devices in a ponzi scheme of so called intellectual property rights for products and services.

Re:Trouble on screen for all who write software.

[Anonymous Coward]

Software patents are so problematic because if you expose your essential algorithm which uses code blocks then all someone has to do is code to it with different variable names.

No that's copyright that covers variable names, and you'd have to do a lot more than just change variable names to make it an original work. Patents will cover the algorithm itself regardless of variable names or even implementation language.

It is the same problem as why technology stagnated during the times before the renaissance and then industrial revolution, methods were kept secret by guilds. ... too much software is granted "a Royal Monopoly" like status. Because that status can then be horded we are headed for a technological dark age.

What a load of bullshit. It was patents that opened up the guild secrets, by allowing guilds to make inventions known without competitors being able to take advantage of that. It's the lack of patent enforcement in China and the lack of software patents in most of the world that is keeping software like Google's locked up in the cloud. What's their current search algorithm? What AI breakthroughs do they secret away? We may never know because the inventions they value the most they don't even patent, they can't be used against them.

Parent post makes no sense. If you work on closed-source code and you are against software patents then you are pro-guild, pro-dark ages.

Please get the headline right!?

[erroneus]

I consider Groklaw to be an extremely reliable source of fact, insight and opinion. The patents are NOT invalidated, but the claims cited within are. It's a software patent, after all.