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[Joelist]

The OEMs are signing licensing deals because they know that in court they are dead to rights on their Android phones infringing on a lot of MS IP. And these are not like the silly Apple patent trolling (which I expect will get tossed on appeal especially as it came out the Samsung case jury foreman concealed past problems with Samsung during jury selection). These are pretty basic, core level elements. Obviously time will tell where this all goes but as it stands now being an OEM using Android is costing more and more.

 

[Overmind One]

The OEMs are signing licensing deals because they know that in court they are dead to rights on their Android phones infringing on a lot of MS IP. And these are not like the silly Apple patent trolling (which I expect will get tossed on appeal especially as it came out the Samsung case jury foreman concealed past problems with Samsung during jury selection). These are pretty basic, core level elements. Obviously time will tell where this all goes but as it stands now being an OEM using Android is costing more and more.

This is what I am seeing as well. In order for Android to be used in the enterprise, it MUST have Samba file sharing capabilities, and it needs to have converters to open Word and Excel and Powerpoint files in order to be used as a aerious business tool in a still dominant Microsoft enterprise environment. And you are right, there are licensing fees being paid to Google and Google is paying them to Microsoft as well. A fortune is being made by Google, since its tablets are still a significantly higher share of the tablet PC market than iPads. But the Surface will change that very quickly.

Everything is telling me that Google will top out Android in tablets and add a new proprietary OS of its own. But who knows? I did see the tablet coming, because of the PADD in Star Trek. Yeah, Star Trek! Such a practical device, reconfigurable displays and portability. it was a natural. Like the still un-invented scanning medical bed. . And this battle will be between Google and Microsoft, and Apple will fall away. Just a prediction.

 

[Bluce Ree]

The OEMs are signing licensing deals because they know that in court they are dead to rights on their Android phones infringing on a lot of MS IP. And these are not like the silly Apple patent trolling (which I expect will get tossed on appeal especially as it came out the Samsung case jury foreman concealed past problems with Samsung during jury selection). These are pretty basic, core level elements. Obviously time will tell where this all goes but as it stands now being an OEM using Android is costing more and more.

But there isn't any MS IP in Android, AFAIK, at least not officially. Android uses the Linux kernel, where most of the core technologies reside (i.e. filesystem drivers, protocol stacks, etc). From what I understand of MS's bullshit assertions, they've made claims that their IP is present in Linux and Android but have never released any exact details. The reason, IMO, is either because there are no IP infringements or for fear of a backlash on its brand. SCO went down that road with Linux, taking on IBM then being taken by Novell, and lost everything. SCO is now a bankrupted, rotting corpse.

I'm not sure where you're getting the cost for OEMs using Android is growing. Perhaps I'm just a little tired but I can't find a single reference supporting the growing cost and MS licensing claims.


EDIT:

Found info supporting what you're saying about MS patent royalties. See my 2nd post down.

 

[Bluce Ree]

Well, I found this:

http://articles.businessinsider.com...4_1_motorola-mobility-patents-motorola-lawyer

Google's Got Microsoft In A Headlock: Pay $4 Billion A Year Or Stop Selling Xbox​

he game Google is playing in court against Microsoft is absolutely brilliant.Today a judge will hear a case between Motorola Mobility and Microsoft, reports Reuters. Microsoft says that Motorola Mobility wants to charge it $4 billion A YEAR in royalties for patents Motorola holds on WiFi and video technology .Microsoft says those fees are unfair.Here's what's at stake:​

• Billions of dollars in money paid from Microsoft to Motorola and eventually, Google.

• The ability for other companies, like Qualcomm to control fees for patents they licenses.

• The ability for Microsoft to import Xbox into the U.S. from factories in Asia.

• Perhaps, ultimately, the ability for Android device makers to use Android without having to pay Microsoft royalties or be sued by the software giant.

If the two don't come up with an agreement, the judge could stop Microsoft from importing Xboxes into the U.S. for sale until they do.

​

​

Whatever prospects Microsoft has or had to get licensed for claimed patent infringements is about to be squashed.

 

[Bluce Ree]

This is an interesting bit of info from the article I linked above.

That is too much money for tech used as part of a standard like WiFi. Typically tech used in a standard is licensed for a tiny fee, maybe pennies per unit. It's a practice called FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms).​

But Microsoft picked this fight with Google. Microsoft has been attacking Android by going after the companies that build devices on it. It has bullied more than a half dozen Android/Linux device makers into paying it royalties on every device they made. Microsoft has reportedly been asking for $5 - $15 per unit (not pennies). Barnes & Noble refused to pay and the two were in court until they settled last week. That settlement keeps Microsoft's Android patent shake-down scheme in tact.


So Google is buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion and giving Microsoft a taste of its own medicine.

By the way, Joelist, you were right about the royalties and I stand corrected.




​

 

[Overmind One]

But there isn't any MS IP in Android, at least not officially. Android uses the Linux kernel, where most of the core technologies reside (i.e. filesystem drivers, protocol stacks, etc). From what I understand of MS's bullshit assertions, they've made claims that their IP is present in Linux and Android but have never released any exact details. The reason, IMO, is either because there are no IP infringements or for fear of a backlash on its brand. SCO went down that road with Linux, taking on IBM then being taken by Novell, and lost everything. SCO is now a bankrupted, rotting corpse.

I'm not sure where you're getting the cost for OEMs using Android is growing. Perhaps I'm just a little tired but I can't find a single reference supporting the growing cost and MS licensing claims.

This will help:

http://arstechnica.com/information-...0-of-android-devices-tells-google-to-wake-up/

And this:

http://www.informationweek.com/software/windows8/microsoft-inks-more-android-licensing-de/240062679

Microsoft is also going after individual manufacturers of high end Android phones, most notably LG at the moment. Joelist is right on this issue, because developers are running into the license restrictions when developing some of the Android apps. There are patent deals which are gaining ground, but may fail:

http://www.winrumors.com/google-believes-microsofts-android-patent-deals-will-backfire/

The battle lines are being drawn, and it will be between Google and Microsoft, and Apple will turn its nose up at this match. In the end, I predict, Google and Microsoft will call a truce and they will become the two players on the field, and Apple will be benched for good. Just a prediction. A way out of this would be to offset the costs by creating a proprietary OS which will still pay to use Microsoft licenses, but then Microsoft (hopefully) will cave in to paying Google to license on this new OS because of the enterprise saturation of the Android tablet already in place. However, the Surface may just push the Android tablets out of the picture and grab the lions share of the market, which I see happening because of the already-in-place interoperability of Windows 8 and the existing majority Microsoft enterprise market. Besides that, the Surface is an amazing device. Its just the beginning.

 

[Overmind One]

Well, I found this:

http://articles.businessinsider.com...4_1_motorola-mobility-patents-motorola-lawyer

[/LEFT]

Whatever prospects Microsoft has or had to get licensed for claimed patent infringements is about to be squashed.

GREAT FIND! Here is evidence for my truce prediction. But the bottom line is that Apple will be pushed out because of this fight. The Google/Microsoft polarization wont leave room for Apple to play.

 

[Bluce Ree]

This will help:

http://arstechnica.com/information-...0-of-android-devices-tells-google-to-wake-up/

And this:

http://www.informationweek.com/software/windows8/microsoft-inks-more-android-licensing-de/240062679

Microsoft is also going after individual manufacturers of high end Android phones, most notably LG at the moment. Joelist is right on this issue, because developers are running into the license restrictions when developing some of the Android apps. There are patent deals which are gaining ground, but may fail:

http://www.winrumors.com/google-believes-microsofts-android-patent-deals-will-backfire/

The battle lines are being drawn, and it will be between Google and Microsoft, and Apple will turn its nose up at this match. In the end, I predict, Google and Microsoft will call a truce and they will become the two players on the field, and Apple will be benched for good. Just a prediction. A way out of this would be to offset the costs by creating a proprietary OS which will still pay to use Microsoft licenses, but then Microsoft (hopefully) will cave in to paying Google to license on this new OS because of the enterprise saturation of the Android tablet already in place. However, the Surface may just push the Android tablets out of the picture and grab the lions share of the market, which I see happening because of the already-in-place interoperability of Windows 8 and the existing majority Microsoft enterprise market. Besides that, the Surface is an amazing device. Its just the beginning.

Google acquired Motorola and is taking Microsoft to school. See the article I linked in the post above.

 

[Overmind One]

Google acquired Motorola and is taking Microsoft to school. See the article I linked in the post above.

We are playing leapfrog! I have been writing my responses and posting them while you have posted yours and I havent seen them yet. We are all getting on the same page. The next 12 months will be interesting to say the least. What I dont think people see coming is the nullification of Apple in the enterprise. Its coming and its coming fast.

 

[Joelist]

Hi Bluce.

That article is from May. In October the bans were all thrown out of court. Microsoft is arguing (and will likely prevail) that the Motorola patents were under FRAND and the terms they offered abused FRAND standards which was why they were not agreed to.

While the whole patent wars thing going on is nauseating, of all the litigants the one that is acting the least like a patent troll is actually Microsoft. The one who is acting the most like a patent troll is Apple by a mile. Motorola is somewhere in the middle as their issue is more trying to extract excessive royalties out of FRAND patents than the Apple tactics of patenting stuff with clear prior art than trying to get injunctions based on those improper patents.

 

[Joelist]

Also found that the US Court of Appeals concurred in junking the Motorola injunctions. The case involves H264 encoding and some wifi stuff and is already being worked on in US Court. Moto wants one price and MS is saying that the price they are asking exceeds FRAND. In fact the court said in their ruling:

"It is clear that there is a contract, that it is enforceable by Microsoft, and that it encompasses not just US patents but also the patents at issue in the German suit,"

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gamesgear/court-clears-microsoft-in-motorola-injunction-case-50009345/

I'd say this is a likely out of court settlement and won't be for anything like what Moto-google wants, especially as their attempt to go forum shopping overseas has been stopped.

 

[Bluce Ree]

Software patents are complete and utter nonsense and serve no purpose except to stifle innovation. The very notion of patenting math or logic is nauseating. Any software patent can be shown to have prior art or a certain degree of obviousness but juries are, by and large, not equipped to make these assessments. Software patents need to go and patents on anything that becomes an accepted standard (read the word "standard") is a perversion of the system.

SCO claims to have acquired the rights to Unix Sys V and they started to assert all sorts of claims. They did what Microsoft is doing, bullying the users and system makers into paying royalties until they made the mistake of trying to take on IBM. Then Novel stepped in proving they, in fact, owned the rights to Sys V and has publicly indemnified all things Linux against its patents and copyrights pertaining to Unix System V.

Microsoft funded SCO's effort against Big Blue indirectly with a bizarre and puzzling Unix licensing deal that put over $16 million dollars in SCO's pocket. SCO got their ass handed to them by both IBM and Novell.

So, for accepted "standards" we have a norm of royalty payments that average pennies per unit yet here we have Microsoft, who have been quite vocal about the threat of Linux and OSS in the past, extorting $5 to $15 per unit for things considered accepted "standards" from the OEMs implementing Android. That, my friend, is the definition of a patent whore. Perhaps not as blatant as Apple but one none the less.

 

[Stonelesscutter]

They definitely have the talent and resources but writing an OS from scratch is a massive undertaking. We're talking years to reach a sufficient level of maturity to be considered commercially viable and stable. It would also need to make commercial sense for manufacturers to purchase licensing. Android would continue to evolve, as would Windows and iOS.

They may have been working on it for years already. Who knows.

 

[Bluce Ree]

Microsoft is nothing but a patent whore asserting trivial patents to extort "licensing" fees.

http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2011111122291296

Sorry, but software patents are nothing but a tool to stifle innovation. I have no issue with asserting copyright over one's work but patents on logic and algorithms are the weapons of an organization fearing its own eminent demise, knows its running out of "innovative ideas" and realizing its days are numbered.

 

[Joelist]

Bluce,

I wouldn't use Groklaw as an authoritative source. Their whole mission statement is the promotion of Linux, and as such they cannot be presumed to be unbiased - indeed the wording of that article shows it is an opinion piece. In any event, again that is VERY old opinion stuff . Microsoft and Barnes and Noble are not in court any longer and haven't been for about 7 months. In fact, they formed a joint strategic partnership - and the Nook eReader is now coming from that joint venture.

http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-barnes-and-noble-joint-venture-finalized-and-named-7000005252/

 

[Bluce Ree]

Bluce,

I wouldn't use Groklaw as an authoritative source. Their whole mission statement is the promotion of Linux, and as such they cannot be presumed to be unbiased - indeed the wording of that article shows it is an opinion piece. In any event, again that is VERY old opinion stuff . Microsoft and Barnes and Noble are not in court any longer and haven't been for about 7 months. In fact, they formed a joint strategic partnership - and the Nook eReader is now coming from that joint venture.

http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-barnes-and-noble-joint-venture-finalized-and-named-7000005252/

I don't disagree regarding their biased but they've been dead on with many issues, especially with regards to SCO vs Linux. Groklaw does a good job of acquiring and publishing court documents and they've been a thorn in the side to their detractors.

Barnes & Noble isn't really my concern. Companies fight and partner simultaneously all the time. Apple & Microsoft, Google & Microsoft, Apple & Google, etc. They shake the left hand while jabbing a knife with the right. It's the nature of the corporate world. That doesn't diminish the fact that Microsoft has a very clear stance against open source. It always has and has stated publicly in the past that it is a cancer and they're showing it by quietly asserting trivial patents for ridiculous fees.

I'm not a Linux fanboi nor am I an anti-Microsoft advocate. I use Windows on my laptop, Linux on my network back-end and I got my wife a Mac for her design work. My tools of choice have to do with what works best and none of it is based on fanaticism. I abhor any company using software patents and its dominant position in the market to stifle innovation. If it weren't for Android, iPhone would still be on iOS 2 and Windows mobile wouldn't be very different from CE. The proof is in the legacy. When Microsoft dominated the market, every iteration of Windows since Windows 95 was basically Win 95 with a bit more window dressing. Advances were only made out of competitive necessity.

 

[Gatefan1976]

I don't disagree regarding their biased but they've been dead on with many issues, especially with regards to SCO vs Linux. Groklaw does a good job of acquiring and publishing court documents and they've been a thorn in the side to their detractors.

Barnes & Noble isn't really my concern. Companies fight and partner simultaneously all the time. Apple & Microsoft, Google & Microsoft, Apple & Google, etc. They shake the left hand while jabbing a knife with the right. It's the nature of the corporate world. That doesn't diminish the fact that Microsoft has a very clear stance against open source. It always has and has stated publicly in the past that it is a cancer and they're showing it by quietly asserting trivial patents for ridiculous fees.

I'm not a Linux fanboi nor am I an anti-Microsoft advocate. I use Windows on my laptop, Linux on my network back-end and I got my wife a Mac for her design work. My tools of choice have to do with what works best and none of it is based on fanaticism. I abhor any company using software patents and its dominant position in the market to stifle innovation. If it weren't for Android, iPhone would still be on iOS 2 and Windows mobile wouldn't be very different from CE. The proof is in the legacy. When Microsoft dominated the market, every iteration of Windows since Windows 95 was basically Win 95 with a bit more window dressing. Advances were only made out of competitive necessity.

*giggles quietly*

On point however, I agree with you Bluce. Respect the "idea", recognise the creator and pay royalties as needed, but don't just shut someone down just because they use elements of your idea.

 

[Joelist]

I'm not a strident pro-MSer either - otherwise I wouldn't have an Android phone and tablet. But I also know that not all Open Source software is honest - they have gotten caught more than once pirating code from commercial products into their own.

In the seedy world of patent trolling the worst offender by far is Apple. This is in part because they managed to exploit a brain dead patent office to get things patented that never should have been (a rectangle with rounded corners...really??) and their constant attempts to get competitor devices banned from the market. This is why I am roundly on Samsung's side in their Apple case - and the more that comes out about the jury and especially the foreman the more I expect it will be reversed on appeal.

 

[Bluce Ree]

I'm not a strident pro-MSer either - otherwise I wouldn't have an Android phone and tablet. But I also know that not all Open Source software is honest - they have gotten caught more than once pirating code from commercial products into their own.

Not from the big players. Microsoft guards its code like Fort Knox. It has released select pieces of code to its OEM developers only under very strict NDA but never enough to put anything significant together, not counting the leaked Win2K source code, which really bore nothing of interest to the Linux community. It did provide some very funny and embarrassing remarks from developers throughout the code, though.

Not all open source projects are innocent. Linux, however, has been quite vigilant at keeping anything copyrighted out of their code. Patents, however, are a little more difficult. The problem with patents on software and algorithms is that they can be too broad and vague. The patents may describe a process without actually having any code, leaving it open to loose enough interpretation to cover just about anything resembling its process.

Patents that should not be allowed include software, algorithms, equations, color schemes, fonts and pretty much anything that is abstract and intangible. Patents were conceived to protect inventors, not hunches or methods. Abstract ideas are not inventions. You may copyright your version of its implementation but to feel like one has some inherent right to suppress its implementation in any other form is purely arrogant and its intent is to stifle innovation or any improvement upon its concept, nothing less.

In the seedy world of patent trolling the worst offender by far is Apple. This is in part because they managed to exploit a brain dead patent office to get things patented that never should have been (a rectangle with rounded corners...really??) and their constant attempts to get competitor devices banned from the market. This is why I am roundly on Samsung's side in their Apple case - and the more that comes out about the jury and especially the foreman the more I expect it will be reversed on appeal.

The whole rounded corner argument is epically ridiculous. Any jury not seeing that as trivial at worst, blatantly obvious at best, is brain dead.

Both Microsoft and Apple have heavily exploited the patent office's ineptness at sniffing out triviality. Apple has been more public and vocal about its patent whoring whereas Microsoft is quietly going after the OEMs instead of facing Google head-on. Both these entities are a thread to innovation.

 

[Joelist]

I would say that some things in the world of software should be patentable. One example would be security protocols. Another would be something like EAS. And it has been a good thing for Android that EAS is out there and unlike Apple MS licenses it at a reasonable cost. A number of Open Source mail servers use it and in fact Google itself licensed EAS and put it in Android starting with Ice Cream Sandwich. Before then the smart Android OEMs licensed it and baked it into their "skins" (like HTC with Sense).

But I do agree that there are big issues in software patents. One is indeed as you said - overly general patents. Another is lack of determining prior art (that actually is a big problem in the entire technology patent world).