Drunk On Licensing Fees And Patents, Microsoft Has Become A Joke
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Re: Drunk On Licensing Fees And Patents, Microsoft Has Become A Joke
#2It's not all that different from when MS used to license OSs to vendors by the number of machines sold, total --- not the number that had windows on them.
Parasites.
Re: Drunk On Licensing Fees And Patents, Microsoft Has Become A Joke
#3Is it an industry requirement that in order to write about patents you have to not know anything about them? In particular, the author seems to not understand that a plaintiff claiming that their patent is being used by defendant to accomplish X does not mean plaintiff is claiming that their patent covers all possible ways to do X.
Re: Drunk On Licensing Fees And Patents, Microsoft Has Become A Joke
#4"How long until Microsoft is making more money on patent licensing than from their mobile unit? Serious question. Maybe they already are."
I'd imagine there's an excellent chance that they already are. Sounds much cheaper to keep a stable of lawyers around than hundreds of engineers, testers, support staff, and marketing folk.
If you think the margins on selling software are high...
Re: Drunk On Licensing Fees And Patents, Microsoft Has Become A Joke
#5It's not all that different from when MS used to license OSs to vendors by the number of machines sold, total --- not the number that had windows on them. Parasites.
Like ESPN licenses it's channels (and even ESPN3) based on the number of subscribers, not the people who actually tune into them?
Re: Drunk On Licensing Fees And Patents, Microsoft Has Become A Joke
#6It's not all that different from when MS used to license OSs to vendors by the number of machines sold, total --- not the number that had windows on them. Parasites.
Like ESPN licenses it's channels (and even ESPN3) based on the number of subscribers, not the people who actually tune into them?
No, it would be more like Toshiba would have to pay to ESPN based on number of televisions sold.
Re: Drunk On Licensing Fees And Patents, Microsoft Has Become A Joke
#7"How long until Microsoft is making more money on patent licensing than from their mobile unit? Serious question. Maybe they already are." I'd imagine there's an excellent chance that they already are. Sounds much cheaper to keep a stable of lawyers around than hundreds of engineers, testers, support staff, and marketing folk. If you think the margins on selling software are high...
The latest trend in business: make money by creating no value whatsoever!
Actually, in my experience this is the MBA ideal. From the pure bean-counting perspective, the ideal business would be something that just made free money. No staff, no overhead, etc.
Re: Drunk On Licensing Fees And Patents, Microsoft Has Become A Joke
#8Siegler is surprised that MS is doing something greedy and underhanded? Is he even aware of MS's history from not even 10 years ago?
Re: Drunk On Licensing Fees And Patents, Microsoft Has Become A Joke
#9It's not all that different from when MS used to license OSs to vendors by the number of machines sold, total --- not the number that had windows on them. Parasites.
Like ESPN licenses it's channels (and even ESPN3) based on the number of subscribers, not the people who actually tune into them?
If you're subscribed to a package that includes ESPN*, then ESPN gets its share of that subscription revenue. If you're not, they don't. The analog for MSFT's licensing practices would have ESPN getting a cut for every subscriber, whether or not their package included ESPN.
Re: Drunk On Licensing Fees And Patents, Microsoft Has Become A Joke
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like ESPN licenses it's channels (and even ESPN3) based on the number of subscribers, not the people who actually tune into them?
If you're subscribed to a package that includes ESPN*, then ESPN gets its share of that subscription revenue. If you're not, they don't. The analog for MSFT's licensing practices would have ESPN getting a cut for every subscriber, whether or not their package included ESPN.
ESPN gets a cut for every Comcast internet subscriber, that's why I get to enjoy ESPN3 (their streaming service). They also tend to do things like mandate that ESPN be available in the lowest level cable packages. Have you ever had to pay extra to get ESPN? If you buy more than the local channels, ESPN comes along.
It's obviously not exactly analogous, but volume licensing based on the number of consumers/seats/etc is pretty standard. We grant people a monopoly over their IP and it turns out they want to extract as much value as they can from it.