Little wonder that Microsoft isn't especially concerned about the market share of Windows Phone. Android makes them more money. Windows Phone is probably just smoke and mirrors to cover up it's Android revenue generating patents.
Microsoft: We've got HUNDREDS of patents on Android tech
Microsoft has been hush-hush about specifics of the patent licensing deals it has been signing with Android device makers, but a new blog post suggests Redmond might be wielding a larger intellectual-property club against the open source smartphone OS than had previously been thought. Buried in Tuesday's announcement that …
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 07:41 GMT h4rm0ny
Good luck persuading a board to direct billions and purchase huge chunks of foreign phone companies just to provide "smoke and mirrors". And as if they care much whether you think they're making money from Android patents anyway! Yes, yes - Microsoft developed an entire phone line and integrated API and spent a massive fortune buying part of Nokia because they're shy of people knowing they make money. Of course they did.
And I can't believe the people who upvoted you just out of reflex to anything that says MS are duplicitous. A little logic and perspective on the numbers involved, people.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 09:21 GMT Tyrion
> And as if they care much whether you think they're making money from Android patents anyway! Yes, yes - Microsoft developed an entire phone line and integrated API and spent a massive fortune buying part of Nokia because they're shy of people knowing they make money. Of course they did.
MS are using Android royalties to prop up the loss making division that produces XBox and Windows Phone. If they weren't shy about it, they'd list it in their financials, not bury it away in order to hide losses elsewhere.
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Thursday 10th April 2014 18:34 GMT sisk
I'm pretty sure MS will make more than $8 a pop from every Nokia phone sold
True enough, but $8 per phone sold from the dominant platform is probably still more total than what they're likely to get from Nokia phones. Nokia's barely a blip on the mobile radar these days.
But are they? That figure smells too much like the mythical Linux 235 patents they previously alleged they held.
They're probably the same patents, given that Android runs a Linux kernel. I've no doubt said patents exist. I could probably even name a couple of them. For example MS holds a patent on deleting files. Just try to enforce that one in court. I'm guessing the rest of them are about the same level of enforceability.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 01:46 GMT Number6
Re: Why permit the secrecy
The patents are public but the licence deals are commercial secrets. If you know what your competition is paying as a licence fee then you're going to fight to be no worse off when negotiating to licence the same patent. I assume there's a gagging clause in the agreements so we never find out which patents are being asserted, it will take someone with a bit of money to go on a fishing exercise to do enough to encourage MS to talk patents, then reveal which ones rather than sign a gagging clause.
More to the point, how many of those patents really are novel and innovative and how many are the bleeding obvious written in obscure language?
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 02:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Why permit the secrecy
"More to the point, how many of those patents really are novel and innovative and how many are the bleeding obvious written in obscure language?"
Well, applying for patents is essentially an exercise in technical creative writing to state what is obvious (at the very least to the inventor) in a way that is seen as confusing and complex so that (a) the patent gets granted and (b) the usefulness of public disclosure is limited to a small amount of people and (c) it covers as much eventuality as possible.
Do patents really encourage innovation in that case, the idea that forcing public disclosure in exchange for exclusivity so everybody else benefits in the long term? I think not, but then again, I'm not doing R&D because of the prospects of riches. Plus I personally think there are enough people in the world that realistically, unless the field is very niche, advanced and expensive to get into, out of that sheer volume of people, an idea and the means to implement it, is generally speaking not particularly exclusive or "hard" to solve. Basically, software patents should be abolished period.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 07:46 GMT h4rm0ny
Re: Why permit the secrecy
>>"If it isn't, it's certainly arguable that the end user should be able to know what patents they are using."
Certainly I'd be interested to find out, but the "end user" to Microsoft is the company paying to use them to build a phone, not people MS have no dealing with who later buy phones from that company. As was given, there are some solid commercial reasons to keep details of which patents they are confidential. All we can really conclude is that if lawsuit-happy behemoths such as Samsung are willing to pay, that's strong evidence that the patents are robust.
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Tuesday 15th April 2014 15:46 GMT h4rm0ny
Re: that's strong evidence that the patents are robust.
>>Indeed, so why did MS settle with Barnes and Noble?
Presumably because B&N gave them about a sixth of their eBook business and agreed to continue paying royalties on Android to MS. We don't know how much those royalties were, and guess what, we don't know how much they are with anyone else, either.
It's weird that some people keep touting B&N about as an example of how MS patents are weak when it doesn't actually show this at all. It's doubly weird when you realize people must be simultaneously thinking B&N are scaring MS away from actually going to court whilst at the same time acknowledging that the mobile phone industry (incl. companies such as Samsung) haven't even challenged MS.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 06:18 GMT bazza
Re: Why permit the secrecy
"If, for example 85% of smartphones on the market infringe 200 Microsoft patents & require a licence is it not arguable that these licences should be frand?"
They're not taking anyone to court (like Apple), they're licensing. They're not refusing to license to anyone. If $8 per handset is anything like accurate that's quite reasonable. Sounds like it's fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory already.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 06:35 GMT therealmav
Re: Why permit the secrecy
They're not taking anyone to court (like Apple), they're licensing. They're not refusing to license to anyone. If $8 per handset is anything like accurate that's quite reasonable. Sounds like it's fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory already.
A reasonable point completely lacking any "MS are evil servants of the devil" agenda. I cant see a balanced argument like that catching on here.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 06:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
@bazza
Including in your post the language "fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory" implies that you think that FRAND has something to do with this. It does not. FRAND is reserved only for standards essential patents, and standards essential patents only come into play when standards bodies get together to create standards that 100% of products in a category must comply with to be compatible (i.e. standards like USB, SATA, h.264, LTE, HDMI, ATSC, etc.) Patents must have been voluntarily submitted to the standards making organization to become FRAND, patents can't be made FRAND against the will of the owner.
If among the patents Microsoft owns is ExFAT, that is not covered by FRAND because it is NOT a standard. It is a Microsoft owned technology that became prevalent in the market because Windows PCs can read it. There's no requirement that phones support ExFAT, and smartphones can be produced that are still smartphones that do not support ExFAT.
Even if Android owned 99.9% of the market, if there were MS patents infringed by Android they would not be FRAND and Microsoft would be under no obligation to license them to anyone at all, let alone on equal terms. They would be within their rights to charge Samsung $30 a handset, and HTC $0.30 a handset if they so chose, or to make per handset price contingent on selling a certain percentage of Windows Phone handsets (at least so long as Windows Phone didn't approach a monopoly share of the market, which doesn't appear too likely)
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Thursday 10th April 2014 11:40 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Why permit the secrecy
"They're not taking anyone to court (like Apple), they're licensing. They're not refusing to license to anyone."
But would it not make more sense to at least publish a list of all these Android and Linux based patents? After all, they are supposed to protect their IP. Would it not be easier to protect if all the other manufacturers knew up front what MS were going on about so they could approach MS for a licensing deal instead of MS going after them or not use the IP in the first place?
Or maybe MS want manufacturers to infringe and so can "force" a licensing deal on more favourable terms by negotiating under the threat of a sueball. Likewise, once said manufacturer is in production, re-tooling to not infringe might be more costly than licensing.
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Thursday 10th April 2014 21:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Why permit the secrecy
Since all Android vendors seem to be signing up, one would assume it is in base Android. Surely one of them has shared the details with Google of exactly what they're licensing (whether the contract allows it or not) and if it was easy to remove Google would have done so.
Presumably iOS also violates some of these patents (the non-FAT ones) but Apple and Microsoft have had a cross licensing agreement since long ago so Apple didn't have to pay up.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 09:26 GMT Tyrion
Re: Why permit the secrecy
> Even if most consumers don't care, we should still be able to obtain a list of which patents there has been paid royalties for with every gadget we buy.
MS would lose their advantage then - which is, without knowing the patent claims, you can't work around them. From what I've seen, most of their licensing deals revolve around FAT based patents, most of which have been invalidated in Germany already.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 02:36 GMT P. Lee
Of course its true!
"That's why we've disclosed all the relevant patents and have pursued the cash-rich inventor of Android and massive competitor, Google, rather than "attacking" our own channel partners and coming to agreements under NDA."
Oddly the other MS' competitors over which MS has no hold (Apple) also doesn't seem to infringe either.
Hmm, nice Windows licensing deal you've got there. It would be a shame if something happened to it...
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 07:27 GMT Michael H.F. Wilkinson
Re: Of course its true!
As far as I understand it, if I develop a piece of code which infringes patents (as Google allegedly has), I do not necessarily require a licensing agreement. If I sell a product with such software on board, I certainly do. This might be the reason MS is not going after Google (or maybe there are secret agreements, where's me tinfoil hat!!)
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 07:51 GMT h4rm0ny
Re: Of course its true!
>>"If I sell a product with such software on board, I certainly do. This might be the reason MS is not going after Google (or maybe there are secret agreements, where's me tinfoil hat!!)"
It's the former. Google are not stupid. They found they could make money through people using Android rather than selling it, and so they avoid having to pay licences by giving it away. Samsung et al. are the ones who have to pay. MS probably could go after Google with them in some very minor way (I think Google has a few tiny channels they technically make money direct from Android), but it would be trivial and a waste. MS want money at the end of the day - they're simple like that.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 14:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Of course its true!
"That's why we've disclosed all the relevant patents"
That would be stupid - people could start to work around them and that would leave microsoft in a weaker position
"and have pursued the cash-rich inventor of Android and massive competitor, Google"
Of course. And it all seems to be going Microsoft's way so far:
http://www.wired.com/2013/11/rockstar-2/
http://wmpoweruser.com/microsoft-finally-sues-google-directly-for-patent-infringement/
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 07:41 GMT wowfood
I agree and disagree. Front end software patents are utter bunk, things like "a method of displaying an icon on a screen with the use of pixels... for a mobile device" or "Bounce back" when you scroll too far. Basically all software design patents.
I'd also say the vast majority of hidden front end stuff shouldn't be patentable, 'patented' spell and grammar checkers for example.
But the completely back end only stuff, filesystems, ways for operating the kernel, I believe this stuff should be protected since it provides something pretty major while at the same time it wouldn't be that obvious to the majority, I mean how many years did it take to put together exFAT or NTFS etc. If it were so simple, android would have migrated to GooFS (google filesystem I just made up) to get around the patent issue.
I think design stuff should however be protected under copyright, just not patent.
On a similar note, I've got a feeling the stuff microsoft is extracting royalties for probably relates to the filesystem / kernel areas. If I remember rightly the Linux kernel makes use of numerous microsoft patents, but is protected by a cross licensing deal of some variety, although android is built off of the linux kernel it's a distinct fork so probably lacks said protection, and I imagine that's where microsoft have gotten their in.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 09:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
"If it were so simple, android would have migrated to GooFS (google filesystem I just made up) to get around the patent issue."
There are plenty of excellent GPLd filesystems they could use, the problem is all the exFAT cards for cameras & so on - they have to read those.
"If I remember rightly the Linux kernel makes use of numerous microsoft patents"
AFAIK only in MS FUD
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 09:59 GMT Vic
If I remember rightly the Linux kernel makes use of numerous microsoft patents, but is protected by a cross licensing deal of some variety
You do not remember rightly.
Microsoft keeps *claiming* that hte Linux kernel violates a large number of its patents. But they have refused to let on which ones.
The commuinity as a whole believes them to be FUDding. There is no evidence to refute such a position.
Vic.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 10:56 GMT wikkity
MS Support
"Microsoft certainty isn't going to act in support of a rival to their own patented technology"
I think they would if mainstream manufacturers switched. As for "out of the box", most hardware still comes with a cd with extra stuff on, why not bundle a ext4 driver? Plus a lot of devices now support MTP, the underlying file system is then irrelevant from the point of view of the connected PC. Always surprised MTP has not bitten MS in the foot by affecting their FAT licensing.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 08:24 GMT Ken Hagan
What would you bother? ext2 is adequate for most purposes and already exists. You'd need to bundle the Windows ext2 implementation as part of the "PC tools" for your phone, and persuade your customers to actually install those, but once you've done that you've broken the FAT licensing gravy train forever. *That* is what Microsoft are worried about.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 07:29 GMT MacroRodent
Re: I assume ...
>There's nothing stopping anyone doing a decent ext4 file system driver for Windows,
It probably is doable (although not so simple: there is a quite a bit of impedance mismatch between how Linux and Windows handle files, like how protections are handled, and the case sensitivity issue).
>and it could become something that everyone just knows they have to install.
This is where it falls down. Unless you can somehow automate it totally (like getting the driver quickly installed the first time an ext4-formatted SD card is plugged in), most users will not bother with cards requiring such tricks.
A little-known fact is that the UDF file system could in principle be used on other media than DVD:s as a read-write file system, and many operating systems already support it, Windows included. So trying to get flash card vendors to use that would be a better plan.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 11:12 GMT MacroRodent
Re: I assume ...
>Second, doesn't UDF have a big memory overhead?
I haven't heard of it having any worse memory requirements than other non-ancient file systems. Surely larger than FAT, but that is also true of exFAT (which does not have much to do with the old FAT file system, apart from the name). UDF comes in several variants to handle non-overwritable media, but flash cards and USB drives would only need one, the simplest read/write variant.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 06:49 GMT Dan 55
Re: I assume ...
Doubt it's exFAT or any kind of FAT, practically nothing accepts SD cards any more and if you plug a USB cable into an Android phone it uses MTP not mass storage so the computer doesn't care what filesystem is on the phone.
Maybe it's MTP that MS is bludgeoning Android manufacturers over the head with.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 09:38 GMT Dan 55
Re: I assume ...
Ok, limiting 'nothing' to Android mobiles, considering the story and the list of manufacturers that MS is going after.
Cameras/camcorders can easily get around FAT issues, all they have to do is save every photo to the SD card with an 8.3 format name. MS has a patent on devices understanding long format names.
Some argue that if the device reads or writes long file names but not both then it's not covered by the patent, I suppose that depends on how lucky the device manufacturer's lawyers feel.
Like someone else said, UDF might also be an answer. If anyone could push it it's probably Google with but it seems like they've already decided on removing SD card support and using MTP and cloud drives.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 05:48 GMT Oh Homer
Hundreds of ... lies
Hundreds of bogus patents along the lines of "rounded rectangles", just like Apple.
If there were any actual substance to these patents, Microsoft wouldn't be so coy about them. Their victims are no doubt coughing up just to avoid protracted litigation - a lose-lose proposition.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 11:11 GMT Havin_it
Re: Is this why some Android devices don't take SD cards?
I'm not sure the move away from SD expansion slots needs to be ascribed to any of this; there are simpler and more satisfactory explanations.
An SD slot adds complexity to your system spec, not to mention taking up a chunk of space in a phone that you're desperately trying to make 0.1mm thinner than the competition's offering (per the current trend). And I assume there's a licensing tithe to be paid to the SD standards cartel, even if it is FRAND.
That's the con, what's the pro these days?
Sneakernet capability? Hell, the phone (and probably the device you want to transfer to/from) has N or even AC wifi, so over-the-air file transfer is almost as fast and definitely less of a fiddle. (I speak from experience, having chosen a Galaxy SIII largely because it had an SD slot but since then have upgraded the house to 802.11n wifi - these days the card stays put.) And of course they're all wanting to flog us the cloud now.
After-market capacity upgrade? Well, we can see elsewhere what the mfrs. think about user-serviceable hardware (soldered-on battery, anyone?). Far better to make that money themselves by offering the handset in multiple SKUs with different onboard capacities.
Even when it comes to plugging the thing in via USB, I think direct filesystem-level access is something that's seen as superfluous (unless you're a neckbeard, which is why mass storage mode is hidden away in the developer options on Android). Most consumers use the phone's storage only for media, so MTP is all they need. (I just wish it worked a bit more reliably on Linux, but that's a rant for another day.)
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 06:53 GMT IanW
If you hop over to www.groklaw.net and do a search for Barnes & Noble (or B&N), you'll see what happened when a target refused to sign the MS NDA, and sued. The patents cited then were laughably weak, and when exposed, Microsoft had to buy B&N off to stop the law case to the tune if several $100M's.
That's why it's easy to frame these "License agreements" as demands with menaces.
I was sincerely hoping this was a distasteful Ballmer thing, and that Nadella would squish it to get Microsoft on the right side of a good reputation. Unfortunately, same old, same old.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 14:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Microsoft had to buy B&N off to stop the law case to the tune if several $100M's."
Actually B&N completely rolled over - Microsoft were offered a large chunk of B&Ns ebook business at a knock down price - and a commitment to support it on Microsoft tech. - and they agreed to pay the requested royalties on Android devices - as settlement to drop the case.
http://www.inquisitr.com/227573/microsoft-settles-android-lawsuit-with-barnes-noble/
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 07:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
So MS claim that China said something without referencing the source document and linked to a translation of the commitments they made without the crucial annexes.
They pretend that RAND means something - RAND is what you say it is unless there is a court ruling.
RAND means very little unless there is a clear published alternative to a non negotiated settlement and that does not seem to be a commitment.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 09:07 GMT h4rm0ny
Re: Many thanks for your help!
Well if this is the case then "we" (in so far us customers buying MS products count) are also assisting in the development and success of Android, by virtue of them building on other's technology. That's the theory of the benefits of trade - two parties focusing on their speciality > two parties both trying to do everything. It's a cousin of the principle of Open Source - sharing the workload is good. They both expect to get something in return for the product of their labours: the old proprietary model expects to get money in recompense and the Open Source model expects to get given back improvements or bug fixes. Or in Google's more parasitic relationship - advertising.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 10:48 GMT Steve Graham
Just out of interest, I formatted a micro-SD card as ext4 and put it in my Android phone. It booted fine and mounted the device entirely as normal (there's usually a VFAT card there).
However, "Turn on USB mass storage" just hangs when I connect it to my Linux laptop, and the laptop sees the USB device but "no medium found". On the other hand, I can connect with adb and copy files to the card.
Not interested enough to pursue further.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 11:27 GMT Havin_it
That is interesting - and weirdly wrong-headed the more I think about it - but I think it's reasonable to call this sort of a corner-case. I mean, half the point of a removable SD card is so you can pop it out and pop it into your PC, which you can do here.
But yes, it's pretty funny that the rest of the system can read ext4 fine, but that solely the bit of code for dealing with mass storage provision (once so vital for Linuxers when it came to talking to their phones' filesystem) makes assumptions that rely on it being FAT.
Out of interest, what model's your phone? Surely to $DEITY this quirk must be in manufacturer code, not AOSP base. If it's the latter, I'd happily file a report just for a (deserved) bit of trolling ;)
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 12:56 GMT Jess
I expect that the portfolio contains a couple of rock solid patents that would be tricky to work around, a few more that are solid but easy to work around if needed, and several hundred weak patents that wouldn't stand up to any serious scrutiny.
No-one is going to make a fuss about the weak ones when they are in a bundle with the strong ones, that is sold for a reasonable price and to anyone.