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Foxconn Signs Massive Android Patent Agreement With Microsoft
Pikoro writes with news that Foxconn's parent company has entered into an agreement to pay Microsoft royalties for every Android device they manufacture, joining a rather long list of companies licensing patents for Android/Linux from Microsoft. From the BBC: "Microsoft has secured a patent deal with the world's biggest consumer electronics manufacturer to receive fees for devices powered by Google's Android and Chrome operating systems. Hon Hai — the parent company of Foxconn — said the deal would help prevent its clients being caught up in an ongoing intellectual property dispute. Microsoft says that Google's code makes use of innovations it owns. Google alleges its rival's claims are based on 'bogus patents.' 'The patents at issue cover a range of functionality embodied in Android devices that are essential to the user experience, including: natural ways of interacting with devices by tabbing through various screens to find the information they need; surfing the web more quickly, and interacting with documents and e-books.'"
Also, how can you tell it is "massive". It looks like all details are confidential. It is unclear which patents are involved, what FoxCon gets in return, how much money is exchanging hands, what is really "covered" by the agreement, etc. It might as well be a "tiny: deal, just focussed on "massive" publicity: "We don't really have anything but with patents you can always do some handwaving, so lets put out a press release how good friends we are, generate some publicity to show Microsoft is still relevant and what a friendly company Foxcon is. As long as they spell our names right any publicity is good publicity. Deal?".
Before everyone gets in a twist. Remember MS was in the phone market for 9-10 years before iPhone/Android... They may have some patents here. They did extensive work in this field. Also remember patents expire eventually. I remember people walking around proudly with their ipaq's and chicklet wince phones and spouting how the dreamcast runs wince.
Let me put it to you this way. When MS and the OEMs first came out with the WinCE phone people were excited (windows in my pocket). The actual result was awful. However MS was up to basically the 7 or 8th version of wince before iPhone came out (and apple blew them away).
MS put a ton of work into this. Sure it is MS (or M$ as a lot of people like to say). But in this case I think they may deserve a bit of recompense. There will probably be a few of you out there that disagree with me and call me a troll. But I saw the amount of work they put into it. It was blindingly obvious that they worked really hard on it. It just rather bad at what it was supposed to do.
Microsoft loses nothing because they are collecting for these patents. Likely they are trying to collect enough that even if they lose them in court, their court costs are covered by the patent fees. Meanwhile they have effectively sown a cloud of trouble over Android even though they (microsoft) don't even have anything competitive in this market.
Tl;dr -- it galls me, the chutzpah of these assholes!
This is Microsoft's new business model: World's Largest Patent Troll.
See, even if they lose in the future of technology, they can leech off those who innovate.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So to paraphrase your post. Basically they tweaked PalmOS.
If their patents had any value, you wouldn't have to cover them with an NDA before listing them. If their patent list can't stand scrutiny then the patents themselves can't have value that stands up to scrutiny.
Normally when Slashdot discusses patents there's a number, the magic patent number, the thing that's remarkably missing with Microsoft. The last one they made the mistake of being open with, was long filenames in a filetable, later invalidated because Amiga had it sooner.
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/03/ms-patent/