ITC Sides With Microsoft Over Patent; Motorola Android Phones Could Be Banned
from the we-protect-patents-by-blocking-cool-products? dept
It's a difficult time to be making an Android phone, it appears. Just days after customs started blocking various HTC phones based on an ITC injunction due to some Apple patents, the ITC has also ruled in favor of Microsoft in a patent dispute with Motorola over Android phones. While there will be appeals and other such things, if this stands, and there is no settlement, Motorola's phones could also be blocked at the border by ITC injunction. Motorola, for its part, noted that Microsoft filed with the ITC over nine patents, and the ITC has only said that the phones violate one patent. Of course, since the ITC has only injunctive relief, it doesn't seem to much matter if it's one, two, six or nine -- the phone can be blocked. I am, once again, at a loss as to how this does any good. Keeping competing products from entering the market seems like the opposite of how you encourage innovation.
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Filed Under: android, itc
Companies: apple, htc, microsoft, motorola
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Glad I already have my smartphone
I even got mine before the manufacturer started paying their Microsoft Tax!
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Funny.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/05/22/46716.htm
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Re: Funny.
Interesting, but having only Windows based phones isn't anything like that...
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Competition and innovation
When you said "...Keeping competing products from entering the market seems like the opposite of how you encourage innovation." you were joking, right? You of all people know that corporations are legally bound to maximize profits for shareholders. If this is what is required to do that, then it must happen.
The only way to start to fix this world is to legally re-define the role and responsibilities of a corporate entity.
Good luck with that one, right?
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Re: Competition and innovation
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Re: Competition and innovation
FTFY
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Re: Competition and innovation
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Suing is business and business is booming.
Kill all the lawyers. There - done.
Now post something that doesn't involve lawyers and/or lawsuits or I will blow up the whole galaxy!
All it would take is a little Illudium Q-36.
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Re: Suing is business and business is booming.
Lawyers are the same. They themselves do not create problems within the law (unless they become politicians but that's another animal). Rather, since they feed off of bad laws, the number of lawyers dedicated to a specific area of the law is a reasonable measure of how broken those laws are.
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Re: Re: Suing is business and business is booming.
See what Shakespeare had to say about them.
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Re: Re: Re: Suing is business and business is booming.
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Re: Re: Suing is business and business is booming.
No, they find them, exploit them and work to enhance them.
I will defend the profession to an extent. The profession is essential to any society that is governed by rule of law and at root it is a noble one. There are many lawyers who behave in that spirit.
There are also many lawyers who are effectively sociopathic, viewing law as nothing but a game without regard to impact on people, society, or even the law itself.
Lawyers are not neutral actors like midichlorians, simply attracted to law. They are more like blood cells in the law's vascular system. When lawyers engage in evil acts, they aren't just unwilling victims with no other choice. They are choosing to use their knowledge to cause injustice.
So it's wrong to condemn all lawyers, but it's very right to condemn lawyers who work toward harmful ends.
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Re: Suing is business and business is booming.
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Re: Re: Suing is business and business is booming.
You really felt it necessary to critique an obvious joke? You must be a real yuk at parties.
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Re: Re: Re: Suing is business and business is booming.
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Money is food for fools
One giant company yelling at another over who can sell what...last time I checked it was about who bought it.
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Re: Money is food for fools
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When did common sense matter?
Patent and copyright are the LARGEST factors in the slowing of progress since the Catholic Church taught the earth was the center of the universe.
Pathetic.
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Re: When did common sense matter?
That may seem like a minor difference, but it's important to keep in mind. Geocentrism was never an official Christian doctrine, and the people who led humanity *out* of over a thousand years of Aristotelian darkness by developing the principles of science, from Grosseteste and Bacon down to Newton and Pasteur, were Christians, every last one of them, and were invariably motivated more strongly by the principles of Christian faith than even by an interest in science itself. ( http://www.ldolphin.org/bumbulis )
So it's hardly as cut-and-dried as "the Catholic Church was holding back progress by teaching bad science as doctrine."
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Re: Re: When did common sense matter?
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Re: Re: When did common sense matter?
Really? And what about the fact that the Catholic Church tried Galileo by inquisition and found him guilty of heresy for his theory of heliocentrism?
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Re: Re: Re: When did common sense matter?
The Catholic Church, for all its myriad historical faults, did in fact produce a lot of what was, in that time and place, cutting-edge science. It also preserved a lot of science that would have been lost through the dark ages. They even developed and preserved knowledge that was at odds with their dogma.
Catholicism was far from perfect on this, but it's too much of an oversimplification to say that Catholicism == Anti-science.
It didn't really go down like that. Galileo didn't get in trouble for heliocentrism as such. The idea wasn't new to the church, and it wasn't allergic to the line of thinking.
He got in trouble because he was making political statements about the church that the church didn't care for. And, according to some historians, because he was a bit of an asshole.
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And the rest or the world cares because?
So what if America's so screwed up.. It's just one market and not even a big one at that.. The rest of the world can enjoy our shiny new smartphones..
:)
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Re: And the rest or the world cares because?
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Re: And the rest or the world cares because?
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Don't shoot the messenger
Don't blame Microsoft. Fix the rules. Blame Congress. Or actually, I suppose we could apply the same logic and see that Congressional behavior is also the logical outcome of the rules we've set up for running Congress. So perhaps the answer is that I need to blame myself (and the rest of the American public) for letting Congress get to where it is today.
Ok, now we know who to blame. Any solutions?
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Re: Don't shoot the messenger
Since really, this is something they say when doing so furthers their agenda, not necessarily always! Don't corporations donate to charity and make political contributions? I think it would be hard to prove that each of these actions resulted (sure some might have) in more profit for the shareholders, yet it is a regular practice. And golden parachutes for executives. Do these really increase shareholder value? What about new headquarters, private jets, in-house chefs and Christmas parties?
Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits just as congress must authorize war.
Only if it fits the agenda.
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Re: Re: Don't shoot the messenger
Donating to political campaigns helps get politicians on their side so they can get laws passed that make it easier for them to maximize profits.
Incentives and bonuses help them secure key people in the Corporation and keep them from moving to competitors.
Corporations are a sociopath/psychopathic entity that only cares about one thing, making as much profit as it can and everything it does in one way or another leads towards that one singular goal.
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Re: Re: Re: Don't shoot the messenger
Not every political donation gets laws passed or politicians on your side. There are probably very few instances that they do, although they usually get more attention than ones that don't. Love to see some statistics on how donations turn into profits. I assume most donations do not directly impact profits. Although the misconception would like you to believe they did.
Incentives and bonuses sure do secure and keep people. But this does not always lead to higher profits! Overpaid people and misplaced incentives do not increase profit. They have the opposite effect.
Ever hear of a B Corporation?
In summary, although corporations are often driven by profit, it is incorrect to say that every decision made is done so to increase the bottom line. They are run by people afterall, who are often rather stupid, and don't know how to really profit, let alone better the world.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Don't shoot the messenger
They are indeed run by fallible people - but that does not change the fact that profits for shareholders are what they work for. If it happens to make the world a better place, well great. However, history documents well the excesses of corporate entities and how the single-minded purpose of profit for the sake of profit has been significantly more detrimental to our world.
The bottom line is that the bottom line is the most important part of a company with shareholders. Only some cursory research and reading will bring you up to speed. I have no idea what a 'B' Corporation is. I'm assuming it's an American corporation with a specific set of rights and responsibilities. In rhetorically asking that, you basically reinforce the idea that there are specific obligations held by various flavours of corporate entities. For-profit companies exist for, wait for it, profits! This does not make them evil, but it does give them an out when it comes to being a good citizen of the world.
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Re: Re: Don't shoot the messenger
Contradicting yourself renders your comments to be invalid.
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Re: Re: Re: Don't shoot the messenger
There is no legal requirement to "maximize profits" that comes with being a corporation. "Fiduciary responsibility" does not mean "always increase profit" either.
A corporation is defined by its charter. The charter lays out what the purpose of the corporation is, and a rough plan for how the corporation will operate.
This can mean "maximize profit no matter what," but not always, and usually it doesn't really require that at all.
The board of directors is required to act in good faith for the shareholders, in accordance with the corporate charter. The shareholders agreed to the charter when they bought the shares. Again, "acting in good faith" may or may not mean "maximize profits," depending.
Likewise, "fiduciary responsibility" is really just a fancy word for "being honest." A for-profit company could completely satisfy its fiduciary responsibility and give away every asset it has to stray cats at the same time, so long as they disclosed their intent to do so and followed the procedures that allow shareholders to exert their authority.
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and I know the definition of the word, I just don't see it that way
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It's not as if either of them are innocent victims.
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It's not that I'm the least bit concerned about what they do to each other it's what the patent war between the pair of them may do for the rest of us. Rather TO the rest of us.
This ruling only applies to Motorola handsets and not Android handsets from other makers so Androd will continue to fly of the shelves while MS sill lags far, far behind every other major player in the smart phone field.
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Like a large number of software patents, perhaps the majority of them, MS's could be meaningless and invalid.
Motorola paid license fees for using the patent in question for a long time which doesn't look good on them but, like many others perhaps they recognized that the patent system in the USA is such a mess it's cheaper to pay the license fee than to challenge the validity of a patent.
Longer term is will mean that patents and patent law are held in the same level of disregard or contempt that copyrights and copyright law are now. While I see the theoretical usefulness of both copyright and patent law in practice they're fast becoming welfare and retirement schemes for lawyers, companies that refuse to adapt to the real world around them or by those who, used to wining every time out in the past, can't buy a win now. (I'm looking at you Microsoft.)
Surely this is the kind of behaviour that the framers of the US Constitution had in mind when they included copyright and patent right? Surely the free market exists now for large companies who have never really had to compete in an open market or who are still insisting it's the 1980's.
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First, you must be from the MAFIAA, they are the ones that make the usual theft analogy with intangible goods. Copied, maybe, stolen?
I'm not very well informed about the nature of these patents but it could something silly like Apple vs Samsung in Europe. It's about how 90° angles have 90° but the corner can be rounded so if their corner uses the same radius then it's infringing. No shit. My brain just melted trying to explain how ridiculous it is.
And it could be the fact that some stuff are just standard, you CAN'T do it the other way. I'm an engineer so I'll go with an engineering analogy. Let us take thermodynamics. Every single machine out there follows thermodynamics laws. No exception. Now, imagine if mr Brayton decided to patent the cycle that takes his name today. Every. Single. Gas. Turbine. And unfortunately the US are granting this type of patent nowadays for the software industry.
While my comment may be somewhat messy, the general idea is that it's not as simple as you imply.
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Shareholders
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Google
Just saying
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