B&N Pummels Microsoft Patent Claims With Prior Art 332
itwbennett writes "As Slashdot readers will recall, Barnes & Noble is being particularly noisy about the patents Microsoft is leveraging against the Nook. Now the bookseller has filed a supplemental notice of prior art that contains a 43-page list of examples it believes counters Microsoft's claim that Nook violates five of Microsoft's patents. 'The list of prior art for the five patents that Microsoft claims the Nook infringes is very much a walk down memory lane,' says Brian Proffitt. 'The first group of prior art evidence presented by Barnes & Noble for U.S. Patent No. 5,778,372 alone lists 172 pieces of prior art' and 'made reference to a lot of technology and people from the early days of the public Internet... like Mosaic, the NCSA, and (I kid you not) the Arena web browser. The list was like old home week for the early World Wide Web.'"
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect in large part because most companies' lawyers basically tell them "Paying the licensing fee is cheaper and surer means to an end than fighting." So far as I can tell, it basically amounts to a vast conspiracy of legal departments on both sides of the fence.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
They haven't beaten them, they still need to draaaaag this through the courts, which MS will certainly ensure this is very very costly and last for years. I.e. even though MS are likely to be full of shit, they have a bigger cash pile than almost anyone else which will ensure most companies don't try to fight it, and take the easy licensing options. In legal terms, it's called a shake-down. The mafia used it rather well.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's possible that these are not the strongest patents Microsoft can bring to bear on the issue. They may just be testing the waters to see how far Barnes and Noble are willing to go with their (to Microsoft) dangerous brinksmanship.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of them were cell phone makers who were, while paying to make Android phones, getting a bigger stipend to develop Windows Phone 7 phones.
B&N has no interesting in making WP7 based tablet. They choose Android because it was a fairly mature, stable, and most importantly, FREE.
Different corporate culture? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to wonder if because B&N are from a different field, where the BS of software patents isn't prevalent, that they're approaching this with a more reasoned perspective than traditional tech. companies do. That is, most software is pretty much the same fucking thing as 20 years ago, and letting people patent shit for tacking on the phrase "on the internet" or "on a tablet" is fucking ridiculous. Thus they have a huge laundry list of examples. Then again, it could be pure naiveté and a losing strategy, as judges are generally even more inept at making reasoned assessments of technology than the utterly incompetent and over-burdened patent clerks, and might do better with only a few examples.
Or perhaps this just stems from B&N not having the same paradoxical "we hate software patents because they hurt us but love them because they let us bully others" attitude of say Google or MS or Apple. Either way, fight the good fight B&N. You'll probably lose, but you're right.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they're device manufacturers. They're used to this sort of patent abuse; they pay the $10 or whatever and move on with life. I mean, they're doing it for their WP7 phones, it's not like $10 will destroy the handset's profit margin.
B&N, on the other hand, is a bookstore. They picked Android specifically so they wouldn't have to pay a license fee on every device they sell, especially not to someone who had nothing to do with it. They have a legal team that's used to dealing with IP issues; they're a bookstore, IP stuff comes up from time to time. They're not used to being pushed around like this; they're usually the ones doing the pushing around against publishers. They aren't going to just lay back and put up with it.
Re:Different corporate culture? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if there is anything beyond the fact that B&N doesn't want to go forward with someone perpetually having a hand in their pocket. I'll wager their lawyers are screaming bloody murder about this, and certainly as a short-term strategy, it's probably better just to pay Microsoft's extortion demands, but in the long-term, if you trash Microsoft's crap patents, you deny them any involvement in your affairs.
Please can we do this to Apple too? (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on Samsung, and Google. Patents were supposed to spur innovation, not squash competition. The system is broken.
Re:Why were other companies so lazy? (Score:5, Insightful)
My guess is: Many patent disputes are settled with cross licensing deals. "Let me use your pantents and you can use mine." B&N is not a tech company so they don't have many chips to bring to this game. This gives them a stronger incentive to fight the patents.
Incompetence (Score:5, Insightful)
More to the point, anyone skilled in the art should have know of such things - including any competent patent reviewer.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue always is time and money. Battling crap patents held by large companies like Microsoft will take years and cost a significant amount of money. Even if you win and somehow manage to get damages, they won't cover the whole bill, and you've spent two or three or even more years in a sort of limbo. You can readily understand why many manufacturers have just said "Fuck it" and paid Microsoft to go away. I'm amazed that B&N is fighting this, because I cannot imagine their lawyers were advising them that this was the way to go.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
all microsoft wants is money.
Apple doesn't care about money from patent suits, they are out to see the their competitors burn.
Re:Prior art, Who cares. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do they not cover Kipling in law school? They should.
There is more, no MS license (Score:5, Insightful)
All the other tech companies are used to dealing with Microsoft itself as partner, either for a product or in commitee. B&N probably has no relationship with MS other then as an end customer of Windows. Now that alone is enough to fuel a bitter hatred.
But basically, B&N has nothing to loose. If they loose they have to pay the same fee as if they didn't. It is not as if MS can hurt them in any other way.
Meanwhile MS has in one move ruined ALL its attempts to appear as if it wasn't the old evil MS anymore. The MS apologists who claim MS is no longer against openess or unwilling to play fair... well... they got to crawl back under the rock they came from and claim that this time MS Mobile Windows Phone Gazillion will be it!
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
samsung and htc both manufacture ms platforms.
they get the money fed back to them.
and htc in particular is an old friend of ms, they manufactured almost all windows mobile phones(even those that were sold under qtek, jasjar etc brands) and probably were in bed with ms in dev side to some extent.
The Android Patent Pool (Score:3, Insightful)
Google should make a change to their Android licensing terms. If you want a licence to the Google services or to even use Android commercially you must allow your patent portfolio to be used to defend the Android OS. With other companies in collusion and forming patent pools to attack Android this seems the best solution to smack down these patent trolls.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not necessarily. It sounded like there was a pretty strict NDA in place. I wouldn't be surprised if it was to keep Google from knowing what the alleged infringing patents were, so Google may not have had a chance to really fight this.
Re:Follow up should be (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that Apple's using their patents on grounds of competition.
I think Steve was so genuinely butthurt over the Android backstab by Schmidt that's it's personal; not professional.
Re:Incompetence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well if they get into a knock down drag out fight with Microsoft and WP7 and or W8 tablets catch on they could be in big trouble. Samsung also makes PCs and laptops. They really don't want to make Microsoft angry.
Re:Follow up should be (Score:0, Insightful)
> over the Android backstab
"over losing the battle to Android."
FTFY.
Re:Stability (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
And in the meantime, the patents they bring out will probably be invalidated.
Well, that certainly explains why the patents they're using in this suit are so laughable. Disposable ammunition.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
all microsoft wants is money.
Apple doesn't care about money from patent suits, they are out to see the their competitors burn.
Microsoft does not care about money. At best they will only obtain 1/3 of the license fees, the rest go to Nokia and the canadian patent troll MOSAID.
Microsoft wants to make it prohibitively expensive to produce any Android phone.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
B&N's brick and mortar stores are going to close up and blow away.
B&N knows that they have to start distributing their titles via electronic means. This is their future, if they just rolled over they may as give up and declare bankruptcy.
So they have a chance if they are successful, but fucked if they don't, so they must try or die.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is if B&N wins, then everyone else who has had these bandied at them has a countersuit to recover the costs already paid under false pretenses.
Wouldn't MS have had a chance (and incentives) to include a clause against this (counter-suit) in the license-agreement they've made the other companies sign? ...
I.e., "Though the patents are valid and the party is in violation, the party waiver all right to bring suit to reclaim any license-fee, should the patents be proven invalid, or the party shown to, in fact, not be in violation"
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
They know that wont stop Android manufacturers.
What they want is for Android to lose it's "free" advantage by encoumbering it with patent licesning costs.
They dont want it to fail off their own merits, just to lose that advantage. A world were some one can get a user friendly OS for free is a world that scares Microsoft. Was true with Linux despite it not being too user friendly, and is even more so with Android, due to it being much more user friendly.