Microsoft Sues Motorola For Patent Infringement... Over Android

from the well,-here-we-go... dept

Just as Microsoft is out there trying to make bad patents easier to invalidate, it's still acting like a big patent bully itself. Remember a few months back when it got HTC to license some patents, which Microsoft claimed covered Google's Android mobile operating system? Well, apparently, Motorola wasn't willing to do any sort of deal like that, so Microsoft has sued Motorola. Microsoft itself was kind enough to send us the press release, which is full of some pretty ridiculous statements from Microsoft's Horacio Gutierrez (with whom I rarely agree on anything):

"We have a responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard the billions of dollars we invest each year in bringing innovative software products and services to market."

Really? Please explain how suing some other company helps your customers? Amusingly, on Microsoft's own blog post about the lawsuit, nearly all of the comments are trashing Microsoft for litigating rather than innovating.

And, of course, to be extra obnoxious, rather than just suing, Microsoft is using the ITC loophole to get two cracks and forcing Motorola to pay.

As for which patents are being claimed here, Gutierrez in the blog post and in the press release makes some crazy statements implying that the only way to do synchronized email, calendars and contacts, or to notify apps of battery power is to violate Microsoft's patents. Below is the list of patents that Microsoft is suing over. It's hard to pick out which one is the most ridiculous:

• 5,579,517: Common name space for long and short filenames
• 5,758,352: Common name space for long and short filenames (yes, again)
• 6,621,746: Monitoring entropic conditions of a flash memory device as an indicator for invoking erasure operations
• 6,826,762: Radio interface layer in a cell phone with a set of APIs having a hardware-independent proxy layer and a hardware-specific driver layer
• 6,909,910: Method and system for managing changes to a contact database
• 7,644,376: Flexible architecture for notifying applications of state changes
• 5,664,133: Context sensitive menu system/menu behavior
• 6,578,054: Method and system for supporting off-line mode of operation and synchronization using resource state information
• 6,370,566: Generating meeting requests and group scheduling from a mobile device

Looking over a bunch of those, you have to think that Microsoft is praying that this case gets settled/decided before it possibly gets the Supreme Court to weigh in on more easily invalidating ridiculously bad patents. That last one is a favorite of mine. Just like we always make fun of patents that are basically "just add internet," this one certainly looks like "just add mobile." In the meantime, it's pretty amusing that Microsoft still won't just come out and sue Google over these patents. It seems to know that Google would actually hit back hard.

Filed Under: android, patents
Companies: google, microsoft, motorola

India Upset With RIM Because Solution To Spy On Emails Doesn't Work Well

from the time-to-stop-using-your-blackberry dept

A couple years ago, the Indian government started demanding that RIM give them a backdoor to read encrypted Blackberry email messages. At the time, RIM insisted that was technically impossible due to end-user encryption (something that's been called into question due to RIM's agreements with other countries, such as Saudi Arabia). A few months after that exchange, India announced that it didn't matter any more because it had cracked the encryption, and could spy on messages at will.

So it seemed a bit odd when India again demanded access to RIM Blackberry messages, leading to a standoff where RIM eventually "backed down" and offered to help India spy on users. However, the Indian government is now complaining that the solution doesn't let them spy enough:

The telecom department has rejected the interception solution offered by Canada's (RIM) for its secure corporate email service. What's more is that it has spurned RIM's technical solution for decoding all chat communication on the popular BlackBerry Messenger service...

In an internal note, dated September 28, reviewed by ET, the telecom department's security wing claims security agencies have been unable to intercept or monitor secure email communication made through the (BES) in readable format. "RIM maintains that it does not have the keys that can be offered to security agencies for converting secure corporate email into readable format," said a senior DoT official with direct knowledge of the matter. The DoT internal note claims law enforcement agencies have failed to intercept chats on the BlackBerry Messenger platform, which runs counters to the home ministry's recent position that it is satisfied with the interception solution offered by RIM.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like RIM is still sticking to the fact that, thanks to end-user encryption, it simply can't reveal the message contents -- but it sounds like it agreed to offer access to other information, which the Indian government feels is not enough. Of course, for all of India's rather public admission that it wants to spy on all sorts of communications, it doesn't seem to recognize that it's scaring companies away from doing business in India, as the threat of having communications spied upon is too big a risk.

Filed Under: blackberry, emails, encryption, india, spying
Companies: rim