
Microsoft won't stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents - walterbell
http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-one-thing-microsoft-needs-to-do-to-gain-real-open-source-trust/
======
zmmmmm
People often misattribute this patent attack as on Android. What they don't
realise is that most of patents involved are simply Linux or general computing
patents. In other words, whether you love or hate Android or Google, is
irrelevant. This is an exact example of a generic attack on a computing system
through use of sketchy, over broad, under substantiated patents. MS happened
to deploy it against Android because Android was the competitor of the day,
but they can and will deploy it as suits their business interests against any
technology or company out there.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
And they already have, back in 2009, suing TomTom for using Linux in their GPS
navigation devices:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._TomTom_In...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._TomTom_Inc).

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personjerry
> So, why are people still paying up rather than fighting? Because patent
> litigation is incredibly expensive. It's cheaper to pay a $5 to $15 per
> device licensing fee than to pay a small fortune and take even a remote
> chance of failure in court.

> Samsung alone paid Microsoft a billion bucks to license its Android patents.

So like, why didn't Samsung take them to court?

~~~
Supraperplex
Give me a billion dollars and I write you a mobile OS. Shoot me an email if
you are interested.

~~~
gvb
Does the billion dollars include indemnification against all patent and
copyright lawsuits?

~~~
mikekchar
I don't know about the OP, but if you pay me up front my shell company will
agree to indemnify you against anything you want. For various reasons, I will
not personally be responsible for any of it and I _do_ draw a heft salary
because I'm _awesome_. But if there is any money left over after design
meetings in the Bahamas on the corporate yacht, I'm sure there will be lawyers
available to take it.

------
dogma1138
I can't seem to understand if MSFT patents actually apply to the Android OS /
AOSP or just to various firmware, middleware and software that OEM's use on
their devices regardless of the OS in question.

The AOSP license and 3rd party notifications do not mention Microsoft and the
patents listed in Chinese doc are like vague in the usual patent-esque way.

But in any case i don't really see the issue here, if MSFT gets royalties from
these patents it would be irresponsible (to their shareholders, and employees)
for them to ditch them, none of these patents claims actually seem to be aimed
at Google or the AOSP project so it looks like the core Android OS is not
really affected by this.

Google owns countless patents and Apple just might be the biggest patent troll
in history and none of them seem to receive even remotely the same amount of
scrutiny.

~~~
mtgx
Even if that was the case, which I don't think it is, Microsoft shouldn't be
asking for stuff like FAT32 royalties.

Think about it. Microsoft is asking for royalties for _making devices that
work with Windows_. How crazy is that? Imagine if Google charged accessory
makers for hooking into Android devices. I don't care if others do this sort
of thing, too. It's just wrong.

It should be an anti-trust issue, especially when you have a dominating OS
like Windows. What are other companies going to do - make mobile devices that
_don 't work_ with Windows?

~~~
dogma1138
Why shouldn't MSFT claim patents for FAT? They've developed it and it was
adopted by everyone and their mother for being good and cheap FS.

You don't need to support FAT to allow transfer of files between your your
Windows PC and the phone standards that abstract the file system like MTP and
PTP exist for this very own reason.

If you are as a phone maker want to enable users to mount their local phone
storage as a fully writable file system cheaply you just format the SDCard
using FAT and pay royalties.

If you don't you can still easily bypass the FAT patent issue by creating your
own abstraction layer which may or maynot require the user to use specialized
software and drivers (BB manager/itune/kies etc.).

That said for the majority of users MTP and PTP are more than sufficient I
have an iPhone now and I do not miss the mount-SD card feature one bit if I'm
honest even without using iTunes on a non-jailbroken device.

I can still plugin the phone and transfer files from the camera which is
pretty much the only bloodything I could do with it anyhow and for this Apple
does not need to support FAR nor pay MSFT a dime.

~~~
gillianseed
>They've developed it and it was adopted by everyone and their mother for
being good and cheap FS.

No, it was adopted in order to have Windows compability, which you need given
the Windows desktop monopoly and since Windows refuses to support any
filesystem it won't get royalties on.

~~~
RaleyField
There are drivers for other file systems like ext3 on Windows.

------
draw_down
Darn, with all this talk we hear of a "new Microsoft", it would be nice if
they stopped doing this.

~~~
anon987
Yep. People come out of the woodwork to praise MS when they do something that
involves Linux, but when they are caught (yet again) doing something anti-
Linux it get very quiet.

I think this headline sums it up best:
[http://www.infoworld.com/article/3042699/open-source-
tools/m...](http://www.infoworld.com/article/3042699/open-source-
tools/microsoft-loves-open-source-only-when-its-convenient.html)

------
cwyers
I am pretty sure the title of this submission is against the site guidelines;
it's not the title of the article submitted and the article's title is
perfectly explanatory.

~~~
andrewflnr
The submitted title may not be much better, but the original is pure
clickbait. It starts off with "The one thing...", and makes you click through
to find out.

~~~
acqq
The current (written by the poster) HN title of this article claims that the
MSFT patents are "bogus" which is surely not true.

Samsung has enough money to challenge them, but they know they would fail, the
patents are valid, as long as the US law supports the software patents in the
current form.

------
Zigurd
The best reason for Microsoft to stop leaching off vaguely applicable patents
on smartphones is that their best chance at reviving their own smartphone
business is with something along the lines of the Nokia X handsets, running
Android, but with an emphasis on Microsoft's apps and ecosystem.

That won't fly without access to Google's proprietary apps and app store.
Microsoft will need to bury this hatchet before they could get that licensing
deal.

They have an SDK for this approach now, with Xamarin. Don't be surprised if
they trade the patent revenue for another shot at phones.

~~~
scholia
_> That won't fly without access to Google's proprietary apps and app store.
Microsoft will need to bury this hatchet before they could get that licensing
deal._

Microsoft could use AOSP or Cyanogen. But is there any known case where Google
has blocked a would-be Android phone maker? And if it blocked Microsoft, how
would that stand up to DoJ scrutiny?

~~~
bitmapbrother
It doesn't really matter. If you don't have Google services and the Play store
your Android based phone is destined to fail.

~~~
scholia
Have you looked at the market in China?

------
ultramancool
I suspect it has a lot to do with the legal deadlock "you'll sue me? I'll sue
you!" type situation companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google and Oracle have
been so reliant upon.

None of these companies have, to my knowledge, ever used these patents against
individuals in the open source community but they sure do love to wield them
with each other...

~~~
cyphar
> None of these companies have, to my knowledge, ever used these patents
> against individuals in the open source community but they sure do love to
> wield them with each other...

There have been many, many cases of patent trolls doing exactly that. The
reason this is relevant to these companies is that patent trolls can _buy_
these patents from a company and then make their money's worth by suing every
Tom, Dick and Harry they want. Sure, $CompanyX might not actually be the one
suing, but they are enabling this sort of abuse of an already broken system.

------
bad_user
Oh, but I thought Microsoft changed.

------
elcapitan
I wonder if this kind of behavior is not creating an obstacle for their move
towards opening their own software and convincing people to use it outside of
the Windows environment. I'm sure all these nice new things have OS licenses
that protect their users, but who knows in which direction this will develop.
People have become pretty sceptic of the Oracle owned line of technology as
well recently.

------
curt15
How did Motorola manage to push back while others caved?

~~~
NegativeK
And why didn't Google/Motorola fight the very existence of the patents?

~~~
curt15
They did. For example [http://www.pcworld.com/article/2070280/german-court-
invalida...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2070280/german-court-invalidates-
microsoft-patent-used-for-motorola-phone-sales-ban.html)

------
yuhong
[http://hal2020.com/2014/03/03/satya-shuffles-his-
leadership/...](http://hal2020.com/2014/03/03/satya-shuffles-his-
leadership/#comment-15007)

------
kazuyan
"So why, with all this, are many open-source fans and developers certain that
Microsoft can't be trusted?"

Source?

~~~
annnnd
Let's vote: +1.

MS doesn't stand a chance when it comes to me (and I imagine others) trusting
them. Too much BS for too many years.

~~~
kazuyan
If I were the writer of this article I would rewrite as follow.

"So why, with all this, am I certain that Microsoft can't be trusted?"

If I want to say "So why, with all this, are many open-source fans and
developers certain that Microsoft can't be trusted?", then I would want source
to back me up. This is how I want to earn "Trust" :)

------
abiox
New MSFT, same as the old MSFT.

------
elcct
Microsoft is Internet Explorer 6 of Open Source

------
CamatHN
As long as litigation is of a positive net present value (i.e. expected return
is positive) then they have a duty to their shareholders to undertake it. It's
just the way of the world, its not like the CEO is taking into account this
when thinking of 'the way microsoft should be' its just the state of tech
innovation at the moment.

~~~
rayiner
That's not actually a thing. Corporate law gives officers great discretion in
how to run the business.

------
mastazi
Slightly OT: "I'm writing this on Linux Mint" must be the equivalent, in the
personal computing world, of having a long beard and wearing hipster clothing.
So many are using it but they all think they are oh-so-not-mainstream. Oh, and
just like those skinny jeans, they are probably going to hate it sooner or
later.

EDIT: I was referring to Linux Mint, not Linux in general. I would never call
a Slackware user a hipster ;-)

------
acqq
You know why MSFT enforces its patents? Because the patents are valid. The US
approved and likes such patents.

Software patents in the form the US does them didn't exist in Europe, but see
this (hint: the US again):

[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+WQ+E-2015-007869+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN)

------
dep_b
It's apparently OK to rip off the best ideas while learning from the mistakes
of more then 15 years of work done pioneering by Palm, Microsoft and Apple and
slapping them on top of a free OS and just paying nothing.

It's hard to see the difference between the first iPhones and Galaxy phones,
in terms of home screen and hardware. You can't tell them apart at first
glance. A clear rip-off. The patents Apple used to sue them were often trivial
but the fact it was nothing but an iClone was obvious.

Apparently that's the only thing you can do to a competitor that copies
without innovating. I can imagine that now Google had a few firsts in Android
(interactive notifications for example) these patents will be swapped more and
more and Microsoft gets less leverage. That's why Motorola didn't have to pay,
they were extremely important advancing mobile technology and have their own
chest of patents as a result.

~~~
RaleyField
> rip off the best ideas

The obviousness bar should be raised much higher so that if a lone
undergraduate could arrive at a solution it is not a patentable solution. If
we are going to entertain software patents then they should be used to cover
major investments, like it works in pharmaceutical industry. Most patents are
not of this kind, and most things in iPhone are just straightforward
progression of prior art.

~~~
noir_lord
Which undergraduate though, I was an undergraduate once, so was Dijkstra, I
suspect his idea of obvious would have been divergent from mine.

~~~
RaleyField
And average one, obviously. This isn't an objective measure, but there are
similar concepts in jurisprudence.[1] Patent system was created in a different
time, but at least to me in the present it only makes sense to use it to
protect ideas that necessitated hundreds of man-years of investment by
competent teams and not to be used for land grabs for trivial ideas that
anyone can arrive at just by virtue of being a pioneer one's field.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_man_on_the_Clapham_omnibus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_man_on_the_Clapham_omnibus)

