After Nortel's patent auction earlier this week, I expect Apple to get in on that game to.
Apple aligned itself with Nokia and Microsoft (both of which are on the WPx platform) in this purchase. I guess they both see a common enemy in Android.
Microsoft’s Android Shakedown
11–20 of 93 posts
Re: Microsoft’s Android Shakedown
#12Legal question: could MS use patent law to get an injunction against the continued distribution of cyanogenmod?
Re: Microsoft’s Android Shakedown
#13"So Android, like every large software product on the planet, infringes numerous Microsoft patents." while that might be true you can't tell until there is a lawsuit. Right now Microsoft is claiming this but no one wants to bet the other way.
One of the things Microsoft has done well is to pick the right pricing plan and the right industry. By making it a per unit fee on Smartphones you make it easy for manufacturers to pass the cost on to the consumer who then subsidizes it through a contract with their provider. The $5 per unit HTC pays Microsoft is only $.20 a month when passed directly on to the consumer and spread out over 2 years.
It undeniably hurts HTC's profits though. Sucks for those that have to pay this Microsoft tax. And it also does hurt Google in the sense that this cost is being passed to Google's customers rather than Google taking this burden.
Re: Microsoft’s Android Shakedown
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well its founder did leave Microsoft specifically to found a company that does nothing but patent trolling ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures ). Given the number of actual products that have come out of Microsoft Research (One the last time I counted) I'd say patenting things is its primary goal at this point
Plenty of MSR stuff has ended up in the hands of other groups and ended up in shipped projects. Just look at Wikipedia: their C# research (Polyphonic C# became Cw became Joins Concurrency), F#, Seadragon, Accelerator (pretty cool, BTW), freaking ClearType... the list isn't exactly short. Surface aside, they haven't produced commercialized products, but that's not the point . Come on. This stuff is easy . Why the cont…
F# is probably your only valid point though I'm not sure I'd call yet another functional programming language an innovation.
Seadragon is Zooming technology that is, at best, a decent demo at this point (and probably designed to be patented). For people who don't know what we're talking about: http://zoom.it
Accelerator I'd never even heard of which is probably because it was introduced in 2006 and no finished product has ever come of it.
Cleartype came out of the Microsoft e-books team which wasn't part of Microsoft Research to the best of my knowledge
So giving you F# that makes two products: Surface and F# for $9 billion dollars per year. So either your argument is those two products cost the majority of that money to maintain or I go back to my original point. Microsoft Research's primary function at the company is to patent things
Re: Microsoft’s Android Shakedown
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the things Microsoft has done well is to pick the right pricing plan and the right industry. By making it a per unit fee on Smartphones you make it easy for manufacturers to pass the cost on to the consumer who then subsidizes it through a contract with their provider. The $5 per unit HTC pays Microsoft is only $.20 a month when passed directly on to the consumer and spread out over 2 years.
It undeniably hurts HTC's profits though. Sucks for those that have to pay this Microsoft tax. And it also does hurt Google in the sense that this cost is being passed to Google's customers rather than Google taking this burden.
I would imagine the S3 purchase has the nice side effect of offsetting some of the costs per phone and gaining HTC their own licensing property. I also see the S3 purchase as helping them in the whole customized ARM game. Cell phones are massive chunks of patents and HTC knows the space well.
Re: Microsoft’s Android Shakedown
#16After Nortel's patent auction earlier this week, I expect Apple to get in on that game to.
Apple aligned itself with Nokia and Microsoft (both of which are on the WPx platform) in this purchase. I guess they both see a common enemy in Android.
The same with the FaceBook + Skype deal, Microsoft is putting their weight against Google. The big boys fighting it out, fun to watch.
Re: Microsoft’s Android Shakedown
#17After Nortel's patent auction earlier this week, I expect Apple to get in on that game to.
Apple aligned itself with Nokia and Microsoft (both of which are on the WPx platform) in this purchase. I guess they both see a common enemy in Android.
I get the feeling that the whole group (Apple, Nokia, Blackberry, and Microsoft) seriously wanted the LTE patents off the table. I think Google isn't in the group, not so much as a common enemy thing, but as a cannot trust them to act like the rest of the corps in a patent group. I really get the feeling that the whole h.264 thing through up warning signs to Apple and Microsoft. These actions (weird bidding, opposing h.264) appeal to Google's technically inclined supporters, but they do give business people pause.
Re: Microsoft’s Android Shakedown
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of MSR stuff has ended up in the hands of other groups and ended up in shipped projects. Just look at Wikipedia: their C# research (Polyphonic C# became Cw became Joins Concurrency), F#, Seadragon, Accelerator (pretty cool, BTW), freaking ClearType... the list isn't exactly short. Surface aside, they haven't produced commercialized products, but that's not the point . Come on. This stuff is easy . Why the cont…
F# is probably your only valid point though I'm not sure I'd call yet another functional programming language an innovation. Seadragon is Zooming technology that is, at best, a decent demo at this point (and probably designed to be patented). For people who don't know what we're talking about: http://zoom.it Accelerator I'd never even heard of which is probably because it was introduced in 2006 and no finished produc…
Their work is used in the academic community. E.g. they have a suite for examining/debugging concurrency called CHESS which was used in a class I took in grad school and is related to and referenced by some of the research my (former) academic advisor professor does, which work is used by NASA to improve space program software.
Re: Microsoft’s Android Shakedown
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple aligned itself with Nokia and Microsoft (both of which are on the WPx platform) in this purchase. I guess they both see a common enemy in Android.
The same with the FaceBook + Skype deal, Microsoft is putting their weight against Google. The big boys fighting it out, fun to watch.
Although Microsoft has a small stake in Facebook and has been a partner for a while now, the Skype integration was probably started before the buyout offer.
Re: Microsoft’s Android Shakedown
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of MSR stuff has ended up in the hands of other groups and ended up in shipped projects. Just look at Wikipedia: their C# research (Polyphonic C# became Cw became Joins Concurrency), F#, Seadragon, Accelerator (pretty cool, BTW), freaking ClearType... the list isn't exactly short. Surface aside, they haven't produced commercialized products, but that's not the point . Come on. This stuff is easy . Why the cont…
F# is probably your only valid point though I'm not sure I'd call yet another functional programming language an innovation. Seadragon is Zooming technology that is, at best, a decent demo at this point (and probably designed to be patented). For people who don't know what we're talking about: http://zoom.it Accelerator I'd never even heard of which is probably because it was introduced in 2006 and no finished produc…
There are going to be plenty of things that come out of MS Research that people don't realize came from there (examples: PhotoSynth, Kinect). Expecting an exhaustive list is unrealistic. Furthermore, MS Research was founded over a decade ago when patent trolling was not as big a deal. It's pretty clear if you read about it that Bill Gates wanted to create the successor to the great post-war corporate research groups (ex: Bell Labs). I find the idea that Gates would really aspire to create a patent troll when there are much more exciting things to do with 1000 phds.
(Disclaimer: I work for MSFT, but now MS Research)