Barnes & Noble Revealing Microsoft's 'Secret' Patents, Which It Believes Cover Android
from the trivial-patents dept
Earlier this year, Microsoft continued its shakedown war against all things Android by suing Barnes & Noble for patent infringement over the Nook. As we discussed, B&N is fighting back in a big way, claiming that Microsoft's shakedown tactics are an antitrust violation. As that effort moves forward, it's beginning to reveal a ton of useful info. While Microsoft continues to try to keep the patents it's using in these shakedowns "secret," B&N has been revealing them. Groklaw has the details:The patents, we read, "cover only arbitrary, outmoded and non-essential design features" and yet Microsoft is demanding "prohibitively expensive licensing fees", in effect asserting "veto power" over Android's features. One aspect of the license, Barnes & Noble tells us, was a demand to control design elements, requiring designers to adhere to specific hardware and software specifications in order to obtain a license. That, Barnes & Noble says, is "oppressive and anticompetitive". I think it's accurate to say that the company believes it is illegal.Beyond revealing more of the patents, the company, in its filings, makes it clear what it believes Microsoft is doing:
Barnes & Noble asserts that Microsoft is attempting "to use patents to drive open source software out of the market," saying it, in essence, is acting like a patent troll, threatening companies using Android with a destructive and anticompetitive choice: pay Microsoft exorbitant rates for patents, some trivial and others ridiculously invalid or clearly not infringed, or spend a fortune on litigation.
Instead of focusing on innovation and the development of new products for consumers, Microsoft has decided to invest its efforts into driving open source developers from the mobile operating systems market. Through the use of offensive licensing agreements and the demand for unreasonable licensing fees, Microsoft is hindering creativity in the mobile operating systems market.... Through the use of oppressive licensing terms that amount to a veto power over a wide variety of innovative features in Android devices of all kinds, as well as its prohibitively expensive licensing fees, Microsoft is attempting to push open source software developers out of the market altogether.Seems like a pretty accurate summary from what we've seen. It's really pretty sad when the focus of your business is hindering others, rather than innovating yourself.
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Filed Under: android, patents, trivial
Companies: barnes & noble, microsoft
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If you just follow the law, you won't have any problems with patents. It is very easy to know what is patented. Just be original and do not leech off others.
Stealing is wrong. Murder is wrong. Especially murdering children. Everyone knows this. If you are against patents you support the kidnapping and murder of children. Everyone likes patents.
Patents bring us a better future.
/s
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I believe this is a poke at the logic of some of the pro IP trolls whom frequent this site.
;-)
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Re: What a load of crap
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Re: Re: What a load of crap
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Question on dates
As far as I can recall, the zero was invented in 1978.
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You're totally against the underage single mother disabled Iraqi war veterans and their puppies.
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Re: patent is not all about goodness.
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Dos? They bought someone else's operating system...
Windoze? Stole that from Apple (who stole it from Xerox)...
Word? They weren't first, not sure who was tho..
Spreadsheets? Same as word...
They've always been complete money whores who bought or stole every good idea they ever came out with..
It's also not really surprising they'd behave anti-competitively and it's certainly not the first time for that either...
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It's hard to argue with innovation like that.
(Mostly because if you try they will respond with more FUD)
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Nah - that would be IBM - now a somewhat chastened and reformed character after they gifted their dominant position to Microsoft.
(I actually think that the way IBM has re-invented itself is an object lesson to all big companies facing market/technological change. Microsoft learnt from them how to create an empire based on FUD - now they could learn again how to survive the collapse of an empire by focussing on the real needs of their customers.)
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Not quite an original idea - but the original Microsoft Basic was their own - and by the standards of the time it was a good product.
Compilers are where Microsoft came from - and Visual studio remain their best (only good?) product.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC
And as for Visual Studio.. I'd say the main reason for it's popularity was a lack of mainstream opposition.. Until .NET it seriously sucked huge balls...
O, another great idea (they never had) C# !
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Re: Re: @ "the original Microsoft Basic was their own"
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Re: Re: Re: @ "the original Microsoft Basic was their own"
Also - inventing new languages is not difficult having the discipline to work with the current standards is harder (for the kind of people who do this stuff). This is one area where we really don't want everyone coming up with their own version.
Arguably one of Microsoft's most annoying features in recent years has been a tendency to refuse to use the common standard and push their own variant (Direct 3D instead of OPenGL, OfficeOpen document format instead of Open document format, J++ instead of Java - J# instead of Java C# instead of Java (ANYTHING instead of Java it seems!)
Originality is NOT always a good thing.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: @ "the original Microsoft Basic was their own"
Actually, the introduction of languages I feel is quite innovative in general. Sure, there's frustration that stems from the vast array of choices out there and the fragmentation/specialization that grows out of that, but the community in general decides what languages will become popular and which will die, so overall, it's kinda an evolution of the programming languages if you will, which is most likely an overall general improvement.
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Perfectly Simple Fix
Persons and companies have been going to the government and getting monopolies, since the middle ages and likely from a lot earlier than that. This rent seeking has always been disastrous to the economy. It is time to call a halt. Take the monopoly privilege out of the patent system. Repeal the part of the law which says patent infringement is illegal. Tell the patent bar to get out of the courts and stay out. Yes, that amounts to instant free licenses for everybody. Greedy inventors will whine a lot. The change is not actually bad for them, if they adapt intelligently to the new situation. However, it is good for the rest of us, because it greatly reduces the cost of the patent system.
The quality of patents is so low that granting a monopoly privilege is not justified. It is up to inventors to raise the quality of their patents. Then maybe they can persuade economists that granting them a monopoly again would be beneficial to the population in general. The economists may be expected to be skeptical, given the history so far.
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There are a lot of what you call prior art out there for stuff that later has a patent slapped on it. So you can be using something for years and then get sued for a patent filed years after everyone was using the same technology.
Take whats going on with Nintento. Where the patents they are being sued for... were filed more then a month 'after' they were showing off a working system on the WII. Some real innovation there for sure.
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Please show evidence of this. Over the past few years, I've seen little that corresponds to this actually happening.
Agreed Microsoft works to protect their business model rather then their patents, but if they do own them and they are infringed upon they are due any compensation they deem it worth
Just because Microsoft, Intellectual Ventures or the myriad of shell companies own a piece of paper vaguely describing a screw, it does not mean they own the market for screws. That's the problem with patents that has not been fixed by the "Patent Reform Bill". It's a useless piece of paper trying to say they can control the market and keep people locked up to their gadgets which aren't even as good.
If someone thinks the costs too much, then don't infringe, innovate your own way
Amazing. The entire problem with this thinking is it misses out on the smaller innovations of people taking a certain innovation and building on it, making the product better. No one can innovate because it's assumed that 100 engineers have to start from scratch everytime they work on something new. How does that make any sense instead of making edits to coding, finding flaws through peer review, and taking resources and making them better with shared knowledge?
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That and there are only certain ways of doing somethings efficiently or effectively, meaning that there are somethings you can't create if you are stuck behind a patent on the only and obvious route to further innovation.
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and get caught by someone else's patent that you didn't even know about.
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There should be a four-step flowchart for patents, if they should even exist at all:
1) Is it an obvious next step in a previous patent? If yes -> No patent
2) Is it a minor adaptation of a previous patent? If yes -> No patent
3) Does it have an alpha-prototype? If no -> No patent
4) Is it being held in a portfolio and being used to shakedown the competition without being in a device close to marketability? If yes -> No patent.
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Picture perfect
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Re: Picture perfect
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You have infringed on my terrible logic patent and I deem it worth all the money you'll ever make, plus all the income of your descendants, ad infinitum.
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Just because you did some obvious research doesn't mean you get paid for it.
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If only normal businesses could get the government to legally enforce there extortion level prices this way...
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There, FTFY.
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Big corporations always exercise monopoly powers.
"It's really pretty sad when the focus of your business is hindering others, rather than innovating yourself." -- You are manifestly ignorant (probably willfully so; it's the only way anyone can remain even vaguely "capitalist") of what Microsoft has been doing the last 30 years. Their "business model" in three words is: COPY AND HINDER.
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Re: Big corporations always exercise monopoly powers.
Big corporations with monopolies: Terrible! Bad! Tear them down! Nobody should get monopolies!
Big (rock?) stars with monopolies (copyright): Awesome! Great! Artists are the kings! Long live copyright!
So...make up your mind please?
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Re: Re: Big corporations always exercise monopoly powers.
First, corporations are incapable of exercising morality. Its officers may, but they must act for the common good of the shareholders and that usually means anything for profit. If it was a real person, it would be a psychopath/sociopath.
Second, blue does not like corporations like microsoft and google because he or his boss blame them for costing him money
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
-Upton Sinclair
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Re: Re: Big corporations always exercise monopoly powers.
Big corporations for me include RIAA / MPAA.
It's Mike who SAID: "I don't want the [RIAA and MPAA] to fail at all." -- And it's past tense, because he dishonestly changed his text without any sign that had; the quote here is what he said first.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111111/03372116719/believing-legacy-gatekeepers-will-fa il-to-adapt-is-not-same-as-wanting-them-to-fail.shtml
I suggest that you just watch for Mike's true attitude on corporations: I'm always against, while Mike thinks a corporation should shield even Righthaven principals, and Mike has no problems with monopolies.
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(emphasis mine)
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Personally, I'm less forgiving. The RIAA pissed me off. For a while, they were acting like true psychopaths. The MPAA started to follow suit but saw the strategy for the cluster fuck that it was and stopped.
I can see both sides of the corporation argument. We want to encourage risky behavior to a point because it can be a great benefit to society. However, the pendulum has swung too far. Corporate personhood is a bad joke.
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Re: Big corporations always exercise monopoly powers.
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RE Patents
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MS Secret Patents
MS � Stick to your core business, Software and Operating Systems are what you do well. Sort of well�
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Re: MS Secret Patents
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Indeed. The commentariat here loves to make laywers pariahs, and it's getting really old really quick.
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