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Microsoft won't stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents

zdnet.com

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Re: Microsoft won't stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents

#61

Post by RaleyField »

dep_b wrote: post #48

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…

> 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.

Re: Microsoft won't stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents

#62

Post by noir_lord »

RaleyField wrote: post #61
dep_b wrote: post #48

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…

> 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.

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

Re: Microsoft won't stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents

#63

Post by RaleyField »

gillianseed wrote: post #27
dogma1138 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fu…

>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.

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

Re: Microsoft won't stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents

#64

Post by dep_b »

ruffrey wrote: post #60
dep_b wrote: post #48

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…

iOS is on top of Palm?

Well they had the Newton as well, don't think they got too much inspiration from Palm for that.

Re: Microsoft won't stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents

#65

Post by scholia »

Zigurd wrote: post #44

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…

> 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?

Re: Microsoft won't stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents

#66

Post by bitmapbrother »

dep_b wrote: post #48

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…

You should really have a look at the MCAM report cited in the article. All of these are old prior art ridden patents that would easily be defeated if someone took them to court. Barnes and Noble was one company that told Microsoft to Fuck Off. When the trial date approached they suddenly reached a business arrangement where the two companies formed a joint company.

Re: Microsoft won't stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents

#67

Post by cyphar »

dogma1138 wrote: post #59
vetinari wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, that you cannot use other filesystem, perhaps more suitable to underlying storage technology, like F2FS, because it does not work with Windows. FAT is actually terrible filesystem. It's only advantage is "works with Windows". For SD-cards, it is actually mandatory to use FAT (exFAT for SDXC). It's part of the spec. MTP/PTP is a non-functioning mess.

MTP/PTP works fine for what it is. Also MSFT didn't force anyone to adopt FAT32 and exFAT for SDHC and SDXC it's not even part of the SD association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SD_Association If there was a better FS out there that met all the requirements for SD cards don't you think it would've been adopted? Because the last thing I think all of those guys wanted is to pay MSFT royalty fees, however the alternati…

> MTP/PTP works fine for what it is.

> Also MSFT didn't force anyone to adopt FAT32 and exFAT for SDHC and SDXC it's not even part of the SD association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SD_Association

> If there was a better FS out there that met all the requirements for SD cards don't you think it would've been adopted?

They need to allow users to plug their SD cards into their Windows machine without it being wiped. That requires using FAT. Considering the fact that most Android distributions use far more modern Linux filesystems (ext, xfs, etc), I wouldn't say that the reason they use FAT is because it's "the best FS out there". In all honesty, you can't come close to ZFS.

Not to mention that Windows has poisoned the UEFI spec by requiring that your UEFI boot partition be formatted with FAT. However, as it turns out, this means that they had to give a patent grant to anyone who implements UEFI-based booting (which is why the vfat Linux kernel code is still there).

Re: Microsoft won't stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents

#68

Post by cyphar »

ultramancool wrote: post #2

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...

> 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.

Re: Microsoft won't stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents

#69

Post by mwfunk »

dogma1138 wrote: post #7
leadingthenet wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what do you mean when you say that Apple is the biggest patent troll in history? It's the first time I hear such a claim.

Apple vs Samsung et al. Issuing patents on silly things like slide to unlock and mag lock even tho those functions existed before Apple has ever used them? Heck I'm surprised they haven't sue every kitchen appliance in Asia for violating their maglock patent.... Heck the first apple iPhone GUI related suit against Samsung was field before the first iPhone was even on the market.

I wouldn't defend any of those cases, but if that's your yardstick for "biggest patent troll in history", then you have a lot of disillusionment and disappointment ahead of you. There is no shortage of vastly sillier patent cases being won by organizations whose entire business model is "winning silly patent cases", in many cases against people who can't afford to defend themselves, but sometimes against giant tech companies as well.

Big tech companies sue each other all the time over all sorts of stupid things. Everybody is suing everybody all the time and it's absurd that they have to play that game, but that's not even close to the bottom of the barrel of patent insanity. Don't mistake the handful of high-profile cases that bubble to the top of your RSS feeds (or whatever) as being a meaningful sample of what is actually going on in the world, because the reality is so much worse than that.

Re: Microsoft won't stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents

#70

Post by bitmapbrother »

scholia wrote: post #65
Zigurd wrote: post #44

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…

> 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?

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