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.'"
First post! (Score:5, Funny)
This post is prior art to everything else in this discussion!
Re:First post! (Score:5, Funny)
Why worry about prior art? Just patent it and then sue posters who can't afford to fight your lawyers.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That would definitely change things. The meaning of "First Post!" would change to something more like "Ha ha, you gotta pay royalties!"
Re: (Score:3)
Royalties on zero $$ are still zero.
Re:First post! (Score:4, Informative)
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Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Interesting)
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, Interesting)
Yeah because companies like Samsung and HTC never stand up to patent bullying. Oh wait, they do (see Apple countersuits).
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: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)
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.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Interesting)
Right, because $5 extra dollars on a $200+ purchase makes it "prohibitively expensive".
Citation needed.
Nobody has yet stated the actual cost per handset.
Mostly because Microsoft stipulates in contract that they must NOT reveal EITHER the patents they are licensing
OR the actual dollar value.
The second part is par for the course, but refusing to allow the licensees to specify EXACTLY which patents they
are licensing is very very suspect.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Informative)
That's only because Apple isn't interested in settling -- the only relief that Apple is seeking is to remove Android from the market.
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.
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
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Microsoft likely feels the same way, and this licensing scheme is just the first volley in a larger campaign against Android. What is interesting to me is that Android clearly represents a legitimately big threat to both Apple and Microsoft. It would not surprise me in the least to see them join forces at some point to squash Android (and perhaps all Linux based pr
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Interesting)
B&N, otoh, wouldn't care. They're not in the business of making phones.
Though I admit that's a bit conspiratorial. And you'd think Google would've fired first...?
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:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Interesting)
Good news! If I'm reading Groklaw correctly, Google's starting to get involved.
I think the reason Google hasn't really been involved before is because Microsoft hasn't been attacking them directly. And because companies have just been rolling over, Google hasn't had a chance to back anybody up.
Google will become involved now that someone is planting their feet, hopefully.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do they not cover Kipling in law school? They should.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Also a possible reason is that B&N is a US company and could go directly after Microsoft in a court of its choice. HTC, Samsung, et al may have subsidiaries here but they are headquartered elsewhere and can't directly access US courts as easily.
Re: (Score:3)
Lawyers do most of the work. It's not like the CEO is personally attending to every mundane court case out there.
The main reason for the lack of HTC's and Samsung's lack of litigation could be that it isn't wise to bite the hand that feeds you... HTC makes Windo
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:4, Funny)
"It's not like the CEO is personally attending to every mundane court case out there."
true, but they should.
We would see a lot fewer of these cases.
If corporations are people, and they are accusing me of a crime, don't I have the right to see my accuser? so really, the majority shareholder should have to be there as well.
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: (Score:3)
I just hope Google will stand behing B&N on this one and provide the much need help. Google could push MS down without putting much of a dent in their cash.
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: (Score:3)
I can't imagine why people don't contract lawyers and insist on the lawyers recovering their legal fees. Shall you win I will pay you up to $X and then beyond that 10% of your legal fees only up to $Y, and you shall independently pursue the plaintiff for recovery of your legal expenses; shall you lose, you shall receive at most $a (less than $X, or maybe a very low rate). We shall provide documentation of agreed upon legal rates and all agreements related to said legal case; you shall supply justification
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Informative)
The difference between the B&N case and the various handset/tablet makers is that the latter can just add the MS danegeld to the consumers' final bill, where for B&N the Nook is simply an 'enabler' for their main business of selling you reading materials. They want to hold down the cost to hook you easier and recoup their costs quicker. Why pay royalties to MS on what B&N sees as basically a digital shopping bag?
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:5, Informative)
And when MP-3's came along the music stores didn't shut down.
Well, actually they did.
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You do realize that Microsoft has nearly double the assets (108 billion vs 57 billion), 10 billion more in equity and 15 billion more in cash/cash equivalents/securities than Google, right? It would be even less of a dent to them.
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Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe a partnership between B&N and Google Books?
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.
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.
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:There is more, no MS license (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Well, they do have something to lose. If they lose, Microsoft will seek a more drastic action. I think the assumption is they feel confident they can win, and if other companies reached the same conclusion that they could 'win' in court, they would still 'lose' on their business relationship.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Informative)
Essentially it went down like this:
MS> Android infringes some of our patents, but if you pay our fee, you can use it.
Potential licensee> What patents does Android infringe?
MS> You'll need to sign an NDA for further discussion.
Companies sign the NDA, and then they're legally obligated not to comment on the specific patents. Microsoft likely doesn't actually expect to win this one. Microsoft expects to send a message that they're willing to enter costly litigation, which would likely be more expensive and more of a hassle than simply paying the licensing fee.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (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.
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Doesn't work that way. Not letting me see the alleged infringements except under NDA doesn't fall under what is expected of the Infringed with regards to Patents. You HAVE to give an opportunity to remediate the problem- and not with those sorts of shackles. If I don't know what I was infringing, how am I supposed to stop?
Easy... (Score:3)
Think about the companies they went after to date. Samsung and HTC both partner with microsoft on endeavours outside of Android (laptops and windows mobile). For both of those companies, caving in may have been considered a safer move from a business relationship move.
Now B&N has absolutely no worries about being penalized on a business relationship they simply do not have. It's worth it for them to fight.
Re: (Score:3)
Court lawyer fees.
That's how the legal system all too often works these days. The monetary cost of raising a case, even if you are on the side of right, is far more expensive than paying off the extortion.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
More insidiously on Microsoft's part, the agreement also has the effect of giving the phone manufacturers a more vested interest in having WP8 be successful.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Informative)
Not true. The rules of evidence in civil cases require both parties to bring everything they have to the table. They can't ramp it up later on in the suit. Although they may be able to start a different suit after this one is over. Watch closely and see how the judge enforces this. It's going on right now in Oracle vs Google.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:4, Interesting)
No that's not how they work. Right now those patents are valid and enforceable, B&N is challenging them, but until they're declared to be invalid any settlements are legitimate. The USPTO decides whom to grant patents to and as long as MS owns those patents that the USPTO granted they can't be sued for using them to get settlements.
Re:Why did everyone else pay? (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't matter.
This is public, not under seal. This will have effects that reach far, far beyond this single case.
The strongest patents Microsoft can bring to bear would also suddenly become their biggest and dumbest decision. Why?
Can you imagine how much effort would be dedicated to invalidating them? Hint: a lot.
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Re:Stability (Score:4, Insightful)
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I do ponder exactly what legal loophole did B&N managed to use to get out of that contract and be able to use the information in court.
As I understand it, they signed an NDA concerning the contents of the meeting where they were supposed to receive the information on which patents they were allegedly infringing... but that information never came out in the meeting. Later, when they received the packet of information detailing which patents they were allegedly infringing, that particular data was not covered by the NDA they signed referencing the meeting, because it did not occur at that meeting.
At least, that's what I recall of the previou
Bill Gates, visionary (Score:4, Interesting)
Much was made of Bill Gates failure to recognise the prominent role the Web would play when he rolled out his book(!) The Road Ahead. Not to surprised the company seems to go around blinkered. Though much of the IP they're claiming is not used for visionary purposes, as this assault on Android illustrates, it's venal.
gates is the most overrated idiot going. (Score:5, Informative)
Sadly, since MS has such a dearth of talent (esp. with that idiot balmer), they have to resort to illegal tactics.
Fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it inconceivable that Microsoft's technologists did not know of this prior art. Since patent law requires that prior art be disclosed at the time the patent application is filed, and not doing so is a violation of law sometimes turned patent fraud, I think the DOJ should go after these rat bastards for these violations.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You mean except for the fact that the patent in the summary DOES mention a number of examples of the claimed prior art in its background section? For example, it specifically mentions Mosiac in it. So what fraud do you mean?
Re:Fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, except workers at the patent office have been explicitly told that it is not their job to look at prior art, that it is up to the courts to decide. This was largely in an effort to get through their enormous backlog more quickly, but any idiot could have seen that it was going to lead to abuse. Incidentally, if you're an engineer looking for a good job, I know when I graduated USPTO was recruiting heavily, they'd even put you through law school if you specialized in patent law.
Re:Fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, except workers at the patent office have been explicitly told that it is not their job to look at prior art, that it is up to the courts to decide. This was largely in an effort to get through their enormous backlog more quickly, but any idiot could have seen that it was going to lead to abuse.
Holy crap. That explains what I am seeing. In one patent that I will have to fight against, the diagrams were of something that was sold back in the 60-70's. You could tell that she had seen it and simply put it down as a patent. For the life of me, I could not image how ANYBODY would pass that, unless they had never seen it themselves (which was impossible since many homes had this). And in each of these cases, I saw that the engineers were likely foreign raised (china specifically). But an order like that, would make as much sense as well.
Thank you for the information. But what a fucking PITA. Now, I will have to deal with GD lawyers and courts. That is in NOBODY best interest.
Re: (Score:3)
I find it inconceivable that Microsoft's technologists did not know of this prior art. Since patent law requires that prior art be disclosed at the time the patent application is filed, and not doing so is a violation of law sometimes turned patent fraud, I think the DOJ should go after these rat bastards for these violations.
Microsoft's early hires probably knew all about it, standing around the water cooler reminiscing the good old days when they used a mouse on a drafting board on some ancient single use computing device. Then the legal department showed up and told them to shut up about knowing such things as they were busy patenting them hand over fist, like they had just invented these technologies.
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:Incompetence (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not only that, they give you time limits on searches. They'll only pay you for e.g. 2 hours to search for prior art for a patent application. And of course, if you do a search and it returns 5000 seemingly relevant results, you haven't the slightest hope of so much as reading the abstracts of all of them in the time allotted, much less doing a thorough job.
Re:Fraud (Score:4, Informative)
It probably has something to do with the difference between claims and description in a patent application. Claims are the part that matter. Often the claims are constructed so they *just barely* pass the obviousness test, e.g. by taking two ideas that are too obvious by themselves, but combining them in a way that's less obvious. The description can then be far more general, and is often shared between many patents, but that doesn't affect the validity of the claims *at all*. To determine the validity of a patent you have to look very carefully at what is being claimed, and only refer to the description as background to understand the claims.
Disclaimer: IANAL and I don't give legal advice. I've just been through this nearly a dozen times.
Re:Fraud (Score:4, Interesting)
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: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.
Perfect move by B&N (Score:5, Interesting)
Looks like they did their homework and so did their lawers. Even if they were not to win this is a HUGE way to attract customers to their hardware/online stores especially when they win. You couldn't get a more massive good will gesture then this especially before christmas shopping holiday.
Re: (Score:3)
The signal to noise ratio would have made it unmanageable.
Get a few experienced people looking for prior art would work better than having two thousand people who don't do this on a regular basis.
Slashdot seems to think that old Star Trek shows count as prior art, I doubt that would cut it in the court of law.
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.
What about the others? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Really, you can't imagine it, even if Microsoft wrote the licensing agreement?
If I were going around extorting people over bogus patents, the sign-this-or-else papers that I handed out would not have anything in them, saying things would get better for my victims if it turned out that some of my patents were declared invalid. If anything, if the agreement did have a clause covering what happens if any patents were invalidated, the agreement would say it makes no difference.
And then if they stopped paying m
Nooks for the Holidays (Score:3)
That's it, everyone in my family gets a Nook this year.
Anyone care to recommend the Simple Touch, Color, or Tablet and the pro's and con's? Links to good reviews are sufficient.
Re:Nooks for the Holidays (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand if you want a more tablet like experience you should go with the Color or Tablet. Given the marginal price difference i think the Tablet is the best buy. It's probably a tough decision for those who already have a Color to decide whether to upgrade or not, but that doesn't seem to be where you're at. In both cases it seems like "rooting" it is a simple case of installing Cyanogen on a SD card and plugging it in, something i think most people on Slashdot can probably handle.
Here's one review i found [msn.com] though it's focused more on the differences between the Nook Tablet and the Amazon Kindle Fire, and gloomily predicting that the Kindle will overshadow despite the Nook's superior hardware.
Re: (Score:3)
Sadly, it's unlikely Cyanogen will happen for the Nook Tablet as they've put in the effort to cripple the device with a signed bootloader and checksummed kernel. Much like all the crippled Motorola handsets, the best you'll be able to do is workarounds and half solutions.
With news from opera (Score:5, Funny)
With news from opera that they have duplicated the faster than light neutrinos does that mean that future art is now as valid a defense as prior art?
"Prior art" does not mean what you think it does (Score:5, Informative)
So, yes, everything listed by B&N is prior art, but it's not necessarily all art that anticipates Microsoft's patents, or even necessarily renders them obvious. This is merely a list of prior art generated by a keyword search... B&N hasn't yet said which piece or pieces of art, alone or in combination, teach or suggest each element of the claims. In fact, they explicitly note that some of the references Moreover, while the prior art references listed below are categorized by patent-in-suit, the references listed relate "to the general knowledge".
Basically, it's a bit premature to claim that the list counters the patents. It may, once they've been mapped to the claims, but until then, it's just a list of art.
Why isn't B&N in Europe? (Score:5, Interesting)
So, sorry B&N, you would have gotten 2 new customers if you would just sell your books and stuff to Europe.
Re: (Score:3)
Media deals. Publishing is just so odd and backwards when it comes to the modern world. You often have to get a different set of deals for every market. I do not if the EU would require just an EU deal or one per country.
That is one of the reasons that the US is so important as a market. It is one big market.
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.
For Those Interested In The Product (Score:5, Interesting)
The Nook Tablet (unrooted) is slightly more open than the Kindle Fire (unrooted)
Some links:
My takeaway is if you have your gold geek card, get the Fire (less money) and root it. If you're less adventuresome, get the Nook for more openness, but get an micro-SD card or you're stuck with only 1GB of free memory.
On the Arena browser... (Score:3)
Don't forget that browser was one of the first (in 1995) to support the CSS drafts that existed at the time (first dating back to October 1994! [google.com]).
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.
Re:Prior art, Who cares. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Follow up should be (Score:5, Informative)
MS and Apple are nothing but patent trolls, no matter how the apologists want to spin it.
Microsoft and Apple both produce actual products, while the standard definition of a patent troll is usually a corporation whose entire business is licensing and/or suing others while producing no products of their own.
MS and Apple are trying to use their patents to make competing products prohibitively expensive. Also reprehensible, but a distinct activity from patent trolling.
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:Follow up should be (Score:5, Funny)
I think Steve was so genuinely butthurt over the Android backstab by Schmidt that's it's personal; not professional.
I'm glad he was finally able to get over it.
Re:Follow up should be (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Follow up should be (Score:5, Informative)
Bit of a derrail here but an interesting point on Job's biography is that Jobs wanted to manufacture their products here, but no one was able to get the high numbers of entry level engeniers needed to operate the factories. He personally told Obama disapointing education standards are to blame. He even stated he was not talking about engeniers with BAs, simply vocational school levels of engeniering education. (Certain regulations were also blamed but only as delay factors, not roadblocks.)
It is sad when China beats us at a contract not due to cheap labor, but due to higher numbers of educated workforce.
Anyways, back to patent trolling!
Re:Follow up should be (Score:5, Informative)
Correction to the correction - MS and Apple both pay the US, Japan, Korea, Germany, and several others for actual products which are all shipped to China where a Taiwanese company is paid to have the Chinese assemble them together.
Re:Follow up should be (Score:5, Informative)
MS and Apple are trying to use their patents to make competing products prohibitively expensive. Also reprehensible, but a distinct activity from patent trolling.
Except when you follow the links and read the article (I Know, I know) you see that trolling is exactly what is going on here.
Microsoft is trolling by proxy, using MOSAID in Canada as a non-practicing third party holder of these patents.
They (MOSAID) specifically state that they can't be counter sued for infringements because all they do is license patents
that Microsoft purchased from Nokia and deposited with MOSAID (after assigning themselves a free license to use them).
MOSAID does not practice these patents. They fit perfectly your definition of a TROLL.
Further Microsoft themselves don't practice most of these patents either, because they don't make phones. But because they licensed
these patents they are attempting to use them as a club to beat Android. So Troll again.
Nokia, not party to this action, retained a license when they sold these patents to Microsoft and their sock puppet MOSAID. They practice all of these patents, and therefore have stayed out of the way and kept their mouth shut on this issue.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Follow up should be (Score:4, Interesting)
for MSFT this really is a "heads I win, tails you lose' situation
Unless msft gets sued back. Google shareholders just voted to allow Google to aquire Motorola Mobility. That will give Google a nice patent arsenal.
It's possible that Google (and others) are getting fed up with msft's patent-parasite attacks on Android. Paybacks can be a bitch.
Re: (Score:3)
I'll call this one:
You'll soon see a news post on how Microsoft wants to reform certain parts of the patent law to protect from patent trolling ...
Someone will come in (probably first post) and state how Microsoft really is a great place to work and even though they are trying to do something good (patent reform) Slashdot will still berate them.
Re: (Score:3)