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Microsoft Increases Android Patent Licensing Reach
BrianFagioli writes: Microsoft may not be winning in the mobile arena, but they're still making tons of money from those who are. Patent licensing agreements net the company billions each year from device makers like Samsung, Foxconn, and ZTE. Now, Microsoft has added another company to that list: Qisda Corp. They make a number of Android and Chrome-based devices under the Qisda brand and the BenQ brand, and now Microsoft will be making money off those, too.
...and yet the EU goes after Google for supposedly anti-competitive behavior for Android, which they provide for free. Along with Google apps and services. Or without them. Yes, there's some grey area where an OEM has to be all Google or all AOSP. And maybe that should be disallowed. But surely, charging OEM's to use your competitor's software and not charging them to use yours is a bigger violation, no?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
If anything points out that software patents should be completely thrown out it's this kind of nonsense. The computer world used to joke about the "Microsoft tax" on new computers due to the cost of Windows. This is, literally, a Microsoft tax on Android devices. At least with Windows you got something, this is money for nothing. This is not what the patent system was designed to do.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
So Microsoft bullies in the courtroom.
Well, not only this: their attempts at making motherboards Window-only bootable is also a despicable maneuver.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Microsoft contributes something (its patents - so others can use them and make money)
Scenario A: Google back when they initially developed Android ran into a design roadblock. They saw no way to solve the particular problem until one of the developers read a MS patent that solved their issue. MS is therefore paid royalties on their patent.
Scenario B: Google developed Android without ever having heard of any MS patents. Once Android became popular MS lawyers studied their patents trying to stretch them enough to find infringement. They bully the Android phone makers into paying billions. In this scenario Android would have been exactly the same product without the MS patents and MS is being paid billions for nothing.
Scenario A is what the patent system was supposed to be. Scenario B is reality most of the time today. Question is if the few cases of Scenario A justifies all the Scenario B's.
You're the one who claimed that Microsoft contributed something, so you're the one who have to show that competitors got their ideas from reading Microsoft's patents. Putting that statement on the left side of an "OR" doesn't do anything.