Barnes & Noble Names Microsoft's Disputed Android Patents 386
Julie188 writes "B&N is really blowing the lid off of what Microsoft is doing and how they are forcing money from Android. It has accused Microsoft of requiring overly restricted NDA agreements from those even entering into patent license talks. Because it is disputing Microsoft's claims, and the restrictions of its own NDA signed with Redmond, B&N has gone public. It has named in detail six patents that it says Microsoft is using to get Android device makers to pay up. Plus, B&N is also trying to force open Microsoft's other plans for stomping out Android, including the agreement Redmond made with Nokia, and Nokia's patent-troll MOSAID."
It's time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well now (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep pushing kids around, and eventually someone's going to push back.
Fortunately, this is a pretty big kid. This should be fun.
The MS TAX..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft can't compete in the market... (Score:5, Insightful)
.
Those who can compete, do; those who can't, litigate.
Andrew Ryan said it best (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the difference between a man and a parasite? A man builds. A parasite asks "Where is my share?"
Re:It's time. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are no totally innocent corporations out there, and I'll always favor independent booksellers, but looking at the Nook in contrast to Amazon's censorship of the Kindle and exclusivity deals for Kindle content, B&N's commitment to bricks-and-mortar stores, and now the company's decision to stand up to Microsoft, I really am finding myself a fan of B&N.
Re:Well now (Score:5, Insightful)
There's quite obviously an assload of prior art for them too.
Re:Good for B&N (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well now (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft exposed as a thuggish patent troll, who woulda thunkit?
Re:Unfortunately (Score:4, Insightful)
"Hey, a notification icon might be a neat idea" is a valid patent in your universe? Really?
So much for "Freedom to Innovate" (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought MS are supposed to be Staunch Champions of the Freedom to Innovate, hardy har har.
Ridiculous - leveraging a few patents on minor functionality which might cover .00001 percent of Android functionality into a patent royalty which is out of all proportion to the "size" of MS's "contribution" to the product AND putting onerous development requirements on Android developers to hamstring it's future progress so that they're own platform can prevail not on its merits, but on their ability to control the competition with patents.
This is *everything* that's wrong with the software patent system.
Re:Unfortunately (Score:5, Insightful)
recognize that they are valid patents that are being infringed on.
Yeah, and those 99 percenters also realize that there are reams of prior art and these patents are pure junk. I'd "infringe" a patent too if it was pure crap that had no right being granted in the first place. These "innovations" are not the property of MS. They were ideas thought of long before MS decided to rape the system by getting them attached to a piece of paper.
Re:Slashdot's new anti-Microsoft position (Score:5, Insightful)
Although you provide a compelling argument. There are a couple of facts that you overlook here:
1) Microsoft wouldn't disclose which patents were the problem to the vendors, nor Google. As stated in the articles here, B&N had to break an NDA to show the world what Microsoft was leveraging for the lawsuits. That's piss poor behavior in my opinion, and a sign of operating in "bad faith."
2) The licensing fees are comparable to the entire cost of a Windows Mobile OS license. This is not a "reasonable" fee which is what patent law calls for.
3) The licensing agreement includes provisions that prevent the licensee from making changes to the product, and reach far beyond the scope of the patents that are owned by the patent holder. Specifically, by allowing Microsoft (in PJ's terms) veto power, Microsoft is attempting to assert full control over a product that they are trying to compete against. That is highly anti-competitive.
And of freaking course Google is releasing the OS for free. It's called OPEN SOURCE. The OS is freely available. Honestly, I can't blame Google for trying to procure patents... It's a defensive measure against cabals like this. The whole point of the lawsuits against Android makers is to use the courts to gain market share. This does great harm to the consumer by stifling competition and innovation (see Internet Explorer 6... That was a hideous mess and web technologies were stagnant until the Mozilla foundation released Firefox). That's why these licenses are problem, and that's why I don't agree with your statement that Google is the problem.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm only half kidding here. Patent lawyers have replaced Personal Injury lawyers as the scum of the earth. The entire patent system needs to be re-vamped, legislation passed outlawing patent squatting and technology stifling. And a firing squad for the patent lawyers.
I like the way we're getting open standards (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot's new anti-Microsoft position (Score:5, Insightful)
Google licenses Android for free, because they get paid in different ways and have a strategy that stretches beyond next quarter. They don't have any kind of monopoly in any of their businesses, so the comparison with MSFT of the 90's isn't a great comparison.
It's a little like Mozilla giving Firefox away for free because they get paid in different ways. Should they be stopped because others who want to charge money for the browser can't figure out a way to compete?
Software and process patents are just a way to funnel money from innovators to lawyers.
Re:Slashdot's new anti-Microsoft position (Score:5, Insightful)
I also submit that if Google had procured the patents in question, not only would we know what they were, they would probably not be using said patents in an offensive to gain market share.
Re:Slashdot's new anti-Microsoft position (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, yes, the surely-objective opinions of "WinSuperSite"...which find that Google is stifling competition by providing an open-sourced smartphone kernel to anyone who asks, and is oppressing the poor, abused coalition of every other smartphone vendor who banded together specifically to pay an exorbitant price for smartphone-related patents and immediately as a group set about suing over Android devices (exclusively). Curiously, they did this when Android's marketshare started to make theirs look rather foolish. Yes, they just want to protect their intellectual property, such as the milestone achievement "No. 6,339,780 placing a loading status icon in the content area of a browser." By precisely duplicating the functionality of "placing a loading status icon in the content area of a browser", Google is oppressing competition, necessitating the actions of Microsoft in demanding license fees in excess of their own product's cost for infringements that they refuse to disclose before being paid.
TL;DR: give me a break.
Something is not right! (Score:4, Insightful)
anti-competetive (Score:5, Insightful)
Patents were intended as the alternative to a trade secret. The way it was supposed to work is that rather than keep everything secret (like the old medieval guild system did) you documented how you built something and in return you got the rights to that device for a limited amount of time. Thus others could see how you did it and either license it from you for a fee or else figure out an alternative way of doing it, and after the time had expired then the information was publicly available.
As for the claim of "bogus" or "largely questionable" patents, are you seriously arguing that "placing a loading status icon in the content viewing area of a browser" (ie, put the status icon where it's actually visible when zoomed in) isn't obvious? Or loading the text first and then the images? Or using handles to change the size of selected text area (how else are you going to do it when you can't click and drag?).
Trivial? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot's new anti-Microsoft position (Score:5, Insightful)
Capitalism: "That don't befront me, as long as I get my money next Friday."
Fanboys...just shut the fuck up. Your chosen side isn't any better than the other.
Re:Slashdot's new anti-Microsoft position (Score:2, Insightful)
Ah, bogus patents. I'm curious how that was determined. Let's read on. Surely, this will be explained. After all, it's an incredible charge to make publicly. There must be proof and some public explanation of why that word was used.
"They're doing this by banding together to acquire Novell's old patents and Nortel's old patents (the 'Rockstar' group including Microsoft and Apple), to make sure Google didn't get them; seeking $15 licensing fees for every Android device; attempting to make it more expensive for phone manufacturers to license Android (which we provide free of charge) than Windows Phone 7; and even suing Barnes & Noble, HTC, Motorola, and Samsung. Patents were meant to encourage innovation, but lately they are being used as a weapon to stop it."
Actually, using patents in this way is a legitimate business endeavor with no proof of "bogusness." But I am curious, if Google had in fact won these patents for itself, would that have made them "non-bogus"?
Yes bogus patents. Read the submission right here. B&N has outlined all of the patents and showed clear prior art for them. That is what makes them bogus. Sheesh. And this is what passes for "insightful" around here? This is the kind of thing that makes it easy to crack "Slashdot sucks" jokes.
Re:Slashdot's new anti-Microsoft position (Score:5, Insightful)
OTOH there is another type of patent troll. A patent troll who is rather incompetent at creating or marketing a specific device or process but still wants to profit off the production of the device. This is MS. MS has had years to bring smartphones to market. They have not done so. They have had years to work within the market to produce a product people want. They have not. So now they are pushing trivial patents to profit off other peoples works. This is not what patents are for.
If MS were to sue someone because they were copying key points from Xbox, there would be no issue. But people are not. Firms are using industry standard methods to develop a mobile device. Using filename, icons, and redenering techniques that MS did not develop, but merely copied from others and was the fist to patent.All they want is a share of a market that they do not have the skill to get. As a result the consumer is being asked to pay more than would otherwise be necessary. Does this sound familiar. It should because it is how MS operates. By getting a cut from ever sale even if MS has no input into that sale. Can any say naked PC?
where patents come from (Score:5, Insightful)
Patents can be obtained when someone invents a novel process or machine that had not been done before... that is what I would have said if you asked me about patents about 30 years ago. Today, patents are obtained by lawyers for the benefit of lawyers. Overwhelming majority of technology patents today are bogus litigation fuel. We all know 100% of all software patents are entirely bogus, yet they are wasting time and money that could go to R&D, instead it's going to the lawyers' pockets.
Computers and their software came this far riding on the skirts of innovation fueled by sharing, competing and communicating. This energy is being tapped today by lawyers who have nothing better to do than to sink their fangs into the arteries of innovation and suck the energy that had been fueling innovation since the 1960's.
Re:Andrew Ryan said it best (Score:0, Insightful)
Bingo. This. A Thousand times this. This is exactly why I belong to a union. *We* do the work, and the fucking leeches in the "executive" suite do nothing but vote to give themselves raises 5 times a year.
Thank you Barnes and Noble (Score:5, Insightful)
Barnes and Noble did the world a favor and maybe we can all return the favor.
Amazon accepted to pay Microsoft while Barnes and Noble is fighting them over their absurd patents.
At the moment many are wondering whether to buy a Kindle Fire or a Nook Color or Nook Tablet.
I have a Nook Color and I love it.
The stock software is ok and color children books are nice, so I would happily recommend the product to non technical people.
The stock software can also do youtube videos etc.
For me, the killer feature was the micro SD card that is bootable. I put Cyanogenmod on it, got the Google market etc.
This lawsuit makes me want to recommend the Nook to more people. I used to feel the kindle fire was just the same (minus the micro SD so hacking is a bit less friendly).
But if Amazon is paying Microsoft, then buying a Kindle Fire is scoring against the Open Source camp.
Re:Slashdot's new anti-Microsoft position (Score:2, Insightful)
A patent troll is someone who has patents, not devices. From this point of view, MS is not a patent troll because it has been in the smart phone business before there were smartphones.
Microsoft is a troll because they don't have any sales volume. The problem with trolls is that everybody who makes something is infringing everybody else's patents, which leaves all the producers on the same footing with respect to one another and lets them negotiate a cross-license, but trolls don't make anything. So they have you over a barrel and they can extort whatever they want out of you. And that's what Microsoft is, because even if you had a genuine legitimate patent that WP7 infringes, the damages are based on sales volume and since nobody is buying WP7 devices Microsoft could just shrug it off. Which makes them a troll.
Re:Well now (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't have a product that runs Windows.
I wonder how much extra a Windows license would cost if you don't pay for the Android license?
Re:Well now (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, let's look at the claims Apple is making:
a rectangular product shape with all four corners uniformly rounded;
the front surface of the product dominated by a screen surface with black borders;
as to the iPhone and iPod touch products, substantial black borders above and below the screen having roughly equal width and narrower black borders on either side of the screen having roughly equal width;
as to the iPad product, substantial black borders on all sides being roughly equal in width;
a metallic surround framing the perimeter of the top surface;
a display of a grid of colorful square icons with uniformly rounded corners; and
a bottom row of square icons (the "Springboard") set off from the other icons and that do not change as the other pages of the user interface are viewed.
The phone you linked meets everything there except what, that it's white instead of black and the icons are square instead of having rounded corners? You can try to claim that the similarities between Apple's device and Samsung's are more than what's listed, but all that means is that the trade dress claims are overly broad.
The fundamental problem is that all touch screen phones have similar characteristics for purely functional reasons. All the similarities between Apple's device and Samsung's come down to a simple calculus: In any market with similar devices competing, you can always evaluate each of your various competitors' products to determine which one is most like yours, and (absent a tie) there will always be one that is. Naturally, a company intent on doing some lawyer-based chest thumping will choose that one as the target of their aggression. Subsequent comparisons between that competitor's device and other devices on the market will always show that device to be the most similar, because it is, and that's why they picked it as their target.
But none of that proves that Samsung did anything wrong. Having the most similar device and having a device that is too similar are two completely unrelated questions. You can have neither, both, or either one without the other. And pointing out a list of generic similarities doesn't prove anything. Pick any two modern cell phones and I'll be able to give you a list of a hundred characteristics they both share.
Apple is making trademark and trade dress claims. The point of those things is to identify the product to the customer when they're purchasing it. Nobody is buying a Samsung phone thinking it's made by Apple.
Judicial Oversight and Android patent licensing (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems like a really foolish thing for a convicted monopoly to do.
Microsoft started it's Android patent protection program [networkworld.com] in full, and their judicial oversight just ended [arstechnica.com] Both events are April 2011... clearly coincidence and happenstance.
Re:Something is not right! (Score:4, Insightful)
Because, if I recall correctly, Microsoft hasn't revealed any of these patents until now. They've basically gone: "We're Microsoft. We're huge. You KNOW we have a warchest full of patents, and it would be an awful shame if something happened to your business that kept you from making any profit due to these patents. We can make this little problem go away, just give us [X]"
These companies don't want to put up the fight, and believe it's probably going to be cheaper, and easier just to pay Microsoft their protection money.
Now that these patents are out in the open, Microsoft licensees may just be rethinking their stance.