Microsoft Wants $15 Per Android Smartphone

sfcrazy writes "Microsoft Corp has demanded that Samsung Electronics Co Ltd pay $15 for each smartphone handset it makes based on Google Inc's Android operating system. The software giant claims to own a wide range of patents used in the mobile platform. From the article: 'Samsung would likely seek to lower the payment to about $10 in exchange for a deeper alliance with Microsoft for the U.S. company's Windows platform, the Maeil Business Newspaper quoted unnamed industry officials as saying.'"

Fuck Microsoft Research

[airfoobar]

If their R&D is so awesome, why can't they make their own products and not resort to ripping off other businesses to make money?

Thickets of Patents all litigated in East Texas

[Virtucon]

Eventually this will wind up with either Samsung entering a "mutual" royalty agreement where undisclosed patents are licensed by guys in trenchcoats, on a bridge, in fog.

Or, they'll go into court and to to patentville USA Marshall TX where every scumbag patent thicket group brings their IP litigation. It's friendlier in East Texas y'all.

It's the cost of doing business I guess.

What exactly are these patents?

[Archtech]

Does anyone know exactly what Microsoft's patents involve? Without knowing that, it's hard to make sense of any of these stories.

Based on the published newspaper articles so far, though, I must say it looks as if patent law is being used to accomplish the exact opposite of its supposed intent. Rather than guaranteeing an inventor the sole enjoyment of revenue from its innovations for a period, it is being used by a company that is not a serious player in the market to impede others from selling their products - and to give it a substantial stream of wholly unearned revenue.

Re:Windows Phone

[surmak]

I wonder if there are antitrust implications of licensing the patents for that same price that they sell the software for.

Re:Microsoft Research

[oakgrove]

Yeah, because surely Slashdot doesn't have hundreds of thousands of unique visitors some of which hold the former view and some of which hold the latter. It's just one guy in his basement. And you. And me.

Re:Microsoft Research

[Stormwatch]

No. No one has. Patents are a scam, a hindrance to innovation and the free market. They must be ABOLISHED.

Re:Fuck Microsoft Research

[airfoobar]

I do understand business, but I couldn't care less about entertaining big business's patent trolling activities. I also understand that patents (and particularly software patents) have nothing to do with invention or innovation and need to be abolished -- something you illustrated perfectly in your comment.

Re:Microsoft Research

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

So when Apple sues Samsung, everyone cheers and claims Apple has every right to defend it's patents.

Where was this? Around here the torches and pitchforks were waving about how you shouldn't be able to protect 'look and feel'.

There's plenty of hypocrisy here, you just found the wrong example.

Re:Microsoft Research

[MightyMartian]

It's a game of poker. You have to pay to play.

Here's what I think. If any patents used to make such threats turn out to be bad or unsupportable, they get converted to charges of extortion.

Re:Thickets of Patents all litigated in East Texas

[deadhammer]

There's a solution to this, of course: refuse to do business in Marshall, TX. Don't open stores there, don't sell phones there, don't allow people with IP addresses from that range into your app store, and insert a catch-all clause in your EULA that you don't support users from Marshall. That way you've removed yourself from their jurisdiction and you can't be sued there. Repeat with each new lawsuit haven that springs up.

Re:Fuck Microsoft Research

[airfoobar]

I'm not sure if you are agreeing with me, but as far as I'm concerned the problem is, a patent does not mean anyone innovated, even the original owner of the patent. Patents are just a way to block competition and extract rents for trivial and vague "generalities" (like you say in your comments). This can't be good for anyone except the big-business rent-seekers; certainly not good for new entrants and the consumer.