Microsoft Increases Android Patent Licensing Reach 103
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.
the need of greed (Score:1)
it's never enough ... complete global corporate corruption is here
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Paying for... (Score:2)
What are the actual MS patents for which these Android companies are paying royalties? TFS and every one of TFAs don't say, don't even hint.
Re:Paying for... (Score:5, Informative)
What are the actual MS patents for which these Android companies are paying royalties? TFS and every one of TFAs don't say, don't even hint.
Look here? [zdnet.com]
Help make a wiki page about it (Score:5, Informative)
I tried to make a more readable version of similar data on this wiki page:
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Micro... [swpat.org]
Help appreciated.
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Well Google does have their remote desktop control app. I've used it to control my Windows PC from an Android tablet. So yeah.
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It's called bundling. Microsoft can't say which specific patents are being violated because they aren't completely sure. Some they do know, others they think may be, depending on how Android is configured and what apps are installed.
Instead, they say "we know you are violating a bunch of our patents. Our one-time offer is a license to 1000's of our patents [but not all, as we still reserve the right to ask for more later] for an up-front fee, money for already-shipped devices, and a per-unit royalty in p
Patents are awesome. (Score:2)
Microsoft does no work, provides zero value, and yet rakes it in off other companies who labor and provide value.
The patent system is working as intended.
Do they charge patent royalties for Windows Phone? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is getting pretty weird. Windows Phone is now free, right? So if a phone maker builds WinPhones, do they pay Microsoft nothing for the same patents? Is that legal - to charge a patent royalty to device makers using somebody else's software - using no Microsoft code, while allowing makers of devices using Microsoft software to pay no software or patent fees?
Microsoft may not have a monopoly on mobile, but the patents in question are surely based on their desktop monopoly. For instance, FAT32. No device maker uses FAT32 because it's a good file system. They use it because of the Microsoft desktop monopoly. So to charge Android device makers a patent royalty on essentially the ability to be compatible with Windows desktops - while letting WinPhone device makers ride free - amounts to illegal tying of WinPhone to their Windows monopoly position, no?
Re:Do they charge patent royalties for Windows Pho (Score:4, Insightful)
...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?
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Google are using their current status to make people use their other programs as much as possible. This is similar to how Microsoft used Windows to make people use Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player.
You also need to keep in mind that Google is a marketing company. They are not providing anything for free, they take your information (and manipulate you to provide even more information via their other programs) and use it to sell marketing to companies.
But to be fair, I would love for the EU to go aft
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Google is certainly using their current status to encourage people to user their other programs as much as possible. Yes, that's their business model. But they don't force people to use them. Google services need to be damn good and damn useful to get people to use them. No amount of encouragement has been able to get people to use Google+, despite the fact that by all accounts it's a really nice system. Facebook has the 'network effect' tying users to their platform. Microsoft has a similar network a
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For instance, FAT32. No device maker uses FAT32 because it's a good file system. They use it because of the Microsoft desktop monopoly.
Actually I think that's an incorrect observation. Everyone is using FAT32 because everyone is using FAT32. Much the same reason every uses certain screw drivers, because all the screws are that shape.
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Close, but not quite: Microsoft still has the vast majority of desktop OS installations, and they only support their own filesystems.
It's not quite like the screw thing, because there's no single company that dominates screws and screwdrivers. People keep using the same screws because of inertia: everyone's used to flat and phillips screws, and everyone has tools for them, so we keep using them even though they suck. Luckily, more and more stuff is finally moving away from those crappy standards, to Allen
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Actually Robertson screws are a good example of a superiour product that didn't catch on (at least in the States, they've always been common in Canada) due to licensing. P. L. Robertson refused to license manufacturer to most everyone including Henry Ford who found using Robertson screws cut a couple of hours off building a Model T so Ford used Philips instead, at least in America.
I curse every time I deal with a Philips and smile when using a Robertson.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.o [wikipedia.org]
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That's a good point and an interesting story; I didn't know that before. You're right, that really shows the danger in being a greedy asshole and insisting on high patent royalties or worse not licensing because you want to be the only manufacturer. IIRC, the guy who invented the first working intermittent windshield wipers was like this too; instead of just selling rights to his design to Ford, he insisted on making them himself, and Ford just went around him. He eventually prevailed in court and won a
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I agree that Robertson are better in general than Philips but they were designed for different applications and are not direct replacements for each other. Philips is designed to cam-out which prevents over tightening during assembly.
I like hex drive and Torx which both support angled drivers but Robertson is just as good in that respect.
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Henry Ford seemed to think they were close enough to be direct replacements so he replaced Robertson with Philips. This at a time when cam-out was important due to inexact driver torque.
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The FAT32 example might be an anti-trust violation. Most of the other stuff probably has nothing to do with Windows desktop OS however. Remember Microsoft was a big player in phones for many years until Apple / Android.
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This is getting pretty weird. Windows Phone is now free, right? So if a phone maker builds WinPhones, do they pay Microsoft nothing for the same patents? Is that legal - to charge a patent royalty to device makers using somebody else's software - using no Microsoft code, while allowing makers of devices using Microsoft software to pay no software or patent fees?
Why would it not be legal - you can offer whatever licensing terms you like both on your own patents and on your own software.
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Just a quibble: IIRC, FAT32 is not covered by any patents at all. It's the "exFAT" filesystem which is patent-protected. FAT32 stopped being useful when portable flash cards passed (IIRC) 2 or 4GB in capacity. exFAT does a somewhat better job with large devices like this, but still, you're right, the only reason people use it is because it's ubiquitous and everything supports it, most importantly Windows, not because it's a great filesystem. So yeah, you could argue that this is illegal leveraging of th
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FAT32 is not covered by any patents at all.
Have the patents on VFAT (long file names in FAT16 and FAT32) expired yet?
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If you want to claim SD[HX}C support
Keyword: "if". No device maker is forced to include an SD card slot. They could go with a USB port or CF slot instead and use UDF.
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I don't see USB for internal storage.
WTF is a CF port. and is UDF the other port type?
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I don't see USB for internal storage.
For internal storage on a PC, continue to use SATA. For internal storage on a smartphone, the manufacturer ought to just solder more flash memory to the motherboard.
WTF is a CF port. and is UDF the other port type?
CompactFlash (CF) is a storage interface proposed as an alternative to Secure Digital (SD). UDF (Universal Disk Format) is a file system proposed as an alternative to FAT.
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You know, Google's actually quite good about patents. They actually worked around all the patents in Android - it was only the likes of Samsung that decided that the de-facto Android UI wasn't 'good enough' and decided to follow the iPhone. Which is why Apple went after Samsung, and not Google. Because Google worked around it in Android (the rounded corners patent), while Samsung basically implemented the entire patent.
Google got rid of the SD slot on the
Bootstrapping Ext (Score:2)
You realize that NTFS replaced FAT over a decade ago, right?
Not on removable media.
a Droid vendor can use EXT, port it to Windows and Mac, and ship drivers with their product
But how would the device make Ext drivers available to the computer to which it is connected without 1. presenting a patented file system on which the driver installer is stored and 2. waiting for an administrator to be present to authorize the installation?
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you can also use wifi to present a network drive or a web service drive.
VFAT patent (Score:2)
fat32 is not patented
The method used to encode long file names in FAT32 is patented, unless that patent expired very recently. Did it?
you can also use wifi to present a network drive
That's in fact what I ended up doing when my PC was having problems with the implementation of MTP on my Nexus 7 tablet. But that doesn't help if you have authority to connect a device to the USB port but not to associate it to the WLAN. This has happened to me in various homes that either A. didn't have Wi-Fi or B. didn't want my devices on their Wi-Fi.
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No more SD cards (Score:1)
I wonder about the filesystem patents when most big Android vendors have now killed off the use of SD cards in phones.
There's no need at all to use FAT unless you've for media that is going between phones and PC's. When transferring by wifi or USB/app, the FS doesn't matter
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So is it that they're claiming some kind of patent on something "special" that FAT32 does? And presumably they couldn't/didn't do the same with Office because everything it does it pretty much just like any other office suite?
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It's a patent so you can't just reverse engineer it unlike if it was only copyrighted. Even if you totally independently invent it, you can't use it due to MS patent. This is one of the problems with patents, sometimes it is just time for an invention and whoever gets the patent wins. Phones were a good example, the technology was there and one day two different inventors showed up at the patent office (with another that week) to patent the phone. First one got the patent which led to the AT&T monopoly.
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Re: Do they charge patent royalties for Windows Ph (Score:2)
Re:So, Microsoft is a social leech! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Rare? (Score:2)
Unless you mean Rare as in the trade name of a Twycross-based video game developer that Microsoft acquired, I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that software patents are so uncommon. See All businesses have software patent risk [swpat.org].
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Actually the "B" scenario is quite common, the technology gets to the point where something is possible and multiple inventors invent the same thing. the classic example was the telephone, due to speakers and microphones being new tech, people put them together to make a telephone. One day two inventors showed up at the patent office, first Elisha Gray whose application went into the inbox at the bottom, hours later, second, Bells partner who demanded that his application get processed right away. So Bell e
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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.
It's not about finding a solution. It's about taking what somebody has worked on, experimented with, done usability testing, put in a product and convinced the market to use and have a second company come in and say thanks for all the hard work, in a month we'll have a cheaper clone doing the exact same thing.
Scenario B: Google developed Android without ever having heard of any MS patents.
...and not knowing of any product using any of the MS patents, even if they were unaware it was patented and by who. Particularly in the same business, it's rather hard not to know what features the co
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Scenario A: Google back when they initially developed Android ran into a design roadblock. ...
Scenario B: Google developed Android without ever having heard of any MS patents.....
Have you heard of my "method to present alternative possibiliies in a 'Scenario A: Scenario B: - structure" ??
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Except in this case, the patent is for the use of VFAT, which is a very specific file system format that even Microsoft doesn't use much anymore, but is commonly understood by their systems.
There is no reason, for example, why Microsoft couldn't implement an open file system like EXT4 or UFS and update all their operating systems to recognize it, except that it would mitigate the value of their VFAT patents. So they don't bother.
I remember reading that they make more money on their patents from Android vend
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The competition didn't bother because the law says that you have to pay royalties even if you came up with the idea independently.
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>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.
The patent system does not protect independent later invention. You don't have to show that you knew of the patent when you implemented something to infringe. See 35 USC 271.
They spend $10B/year on research (Score:1)
Usually, I dislike MSFT and the USPTO.
But I have to credit Microsoft with spending cold hard cash on research, for several years. We need more companies to invest in long-term research. Companies like HP who lay off their R&D staff for a quick buck deserve to go under.
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For extraordinarily small values of probably. Lobbying is measured in millions, unlike the billions for research. And for whatever it's worth, Google spends more on lobbying than Microsoft does. Or anybody else. [dailydot.com]
Prime example (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Microsoft did the research and built the tech, anyone who doesn't want to pay royalties is free to fund their own R&D and develop their own technology. Rewarding those who invest in R&D and the expense of those who don't but wish to take shortcuts on the backs and work of those who do develop tech is precisely how the patent system is intended to work.
This is, literally, a Microsoft tax on Android devices. At least with Windows you got something, this is money for nothing
If having a functional mobile phone is "nothing" in your books, sure. There are 2-300 patents at play here, most of them developed by Microsoft, some
No provenance; spectrum leases (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft did the research and built the tech, anyone who doesn't want to pay royalties is free to fund their own R&D and develop their own technology.
Unlike copyrights, patents disregard provenance. This means that even someone who does fund his own research and development could end up independently reaching the same solutions* that Microsoft engineers reached. This would run the risk of having production shut down by Microsoft's legal department.
Again, vendors are free to develop their own technology, nothing stops them
One thing that stops them is the exclusive license granted by national radio regulators to cellular network operators. All cellular network operators holding substantial spectrum leases have chosen to require the use of patented protocols to communicate with their networks.
* "Same" here shall be interpreted in accordance with the doctrine of equivalents.
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This is not what the patent system was designed to do.
At least, not originally.
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Microsoft can't compete in the marketplace (Score:5, Insightful)
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Everyone in the industry ...
But "everyone in the industry" didn't use that line when speaking of its competitors a short while ago. That's what makes it so egregious for Microsoft to use the courts instead of trying to compete nowadays.
And this is why Microsoft is still a scumbag corp. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, not only this: their attempts at making motherboards Window-only bootable is also a despicable maneuver.
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Care to tell about it for one pretty uninformed individual?
I don't know much about TPM and new hardware encryption thingy (for DRM?)
Why doesn't Google challenge Microsoft's patents? (Score:2)
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Alice vs. CLS Bank (Score:2)
Alice vs. CLS Bank has been widely read to outlaw, or at the very least greatly restrict, software patents in the US. Perhaps Microsoft's parasitic gravy train is near an end? One can only hope.
Microsoft is detrimental to hardware (Score:2)