Patent Aggressor Microsoft Files EU Complaint Against Google/Motorola For Charging Too Much To License Patents
from the live-by-the-sword dept
It’s difficult not to look cynically at Microsoft’s latest move to file an antitrust complaint in the EU over Motorola’s patent royalty rates, and think about just how obnoxiously hypocritical Microsoft is being as a company on this particular issue. First off, Microsoft has become a pretty significant patent aggressor over the past few years, filing lawsuits and pressuring companies to pay up. It’s also been a huge fan of patent FUD — especially against open source competitors. Most people assume that Microsoft was the main player behind SCO’s quixotic (but costly and distracting) legal battle against Linux. Then, of course, every so often Microsoft officials insist that Linux infringes on a bunch of its patents, but it never wants to make clear which ones. More recently, of course, Microsoft has been demanding license fees for its patents from a variety of companies making use of Android — to the point that some have argued Microsoft makes more off each Android installation than each Microsoft Phone installation.
Of course it was partly Microsoft’s aggressive patent position against Android that put Google in the position of feeling compelled to buy Motorola Mobility to get its patent portfolio, mainly for the sake of protecting itself and having a bunch of patents that it could use as a shield against a lawsuit from the likes of Microsoft. Of course, Microsoft was already suing Motorola over the company’s use of Android.
A few weeks ago, we discussed the tough spot that Google was in over Motorola’s patents. The company has indicated that would keep in place Motorola’s current patent licensing strategy. While many of us would prefer that Google make a big statement by freeing or opening up many of these patents, the company is actually in something of a ridiculous position: if it does that… its competitors (mainly Microsoft) will claim anti-trust violations by saying that the company is using its market position to undercut the prices that other charge.
It’s other choice? Keep the current rates. And that’s what it’s indicated it would do… so the second that the EU and the US approved the merger, Microsoft files this antitrust complaint, arguing that the rates Motorola charges for its patents is too high. It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t position for Google. Keep the rates as they are, and they’re violating antitrust rules by charging too much. Cut the prices or free up some of the patents, and it’s an antitrust issue for leveraging their position and “dumping” in the market.
Of course, Microsoft’s almost gleeful blog post about its complaint ignores all of this reality and history, and tries to position it as if Motorola and Google are trying to “kill” web and mobile video by charging too high a royalty rate. Frankly, for anyone who knows anything about Microsoft’s patent practices over the past few years, they’ll see through this and recognize how laughable Microsoft’s claims are.
Either way, the situation is ridiculous. Fighting over patents doesn’t help bring any new innovations to market. It just diverts money to the lawyers.
Filed Under: android, antitrust, eu, frand, patents, smartphones
Companies: google, microsoft, motorola
Comments on “Patent Aggressor Microsoft Files EU Complaint Against Google/Motorola For Charging Too Much To License Patents”
I have given MS enough money
I like MS products, I think Windows 7 is a good OS, Win XP was extremely stable and it there is no substitute for MS Office. But I do not want to reward their bullying ways with patents. So I am going to avoid giving MS any more of my money if I can help it. I had thought that if/when they come out with a good tablet and phone OS that can run MS applications, I would seriously look into them. But no more. I cannot reward a company who acts as they do.
shame on you for ignoring the difference between FRAND and non FRAND patents.
Microsoft is focused on infringement of patents that it has not contributed to any industry standard. And Microsoft is making its patents?standard essential and otherwise?available to all Android manufacturers on fair and reasonable terms. In fact, more than 70 percent of Android devices are now licensed to use Microsoft?s patent portfolio.
The point is simple if you use the collective agreement of a standard to push your patent to defacto status then you should not charge the same rate for the patent, that gains defacto status because it is superior to the standard.
Patent Abolition
The sooner the patent system gets abolished then the sooner all this sort of nonsense stops. The patent bar has had hundreds of years to fix the patent system and make it actually produce benefits to the public in excess of its vast costs. They have not done it. They will never do it. They cannot do it. They do not want to do it. The USPTO simply refuses to conform to its own legislation and issue patents only for things which are truly novel and truly non-obvious. Nearly all patents are junk patents. Time is up. It is time to abolish the patent system.
The patent system is an economic dead loss. Its benefits are illusory. Its costs are real and very large. It is a job killer. Politicians need to be held to their continual claims that they are in favour of more jobs. Judge them on whether they are in favour of abolishing the patent system or not.
Best understood as a vegetarian eating celery
The legal complaint is, at least as far as I understand it, a completely normal thing. I distinctly recall hearing SteveB say that Microsoft is not a software company, MS is an intellectual property company that happens to sell software. That is the correct way to think about what they do, and why.
one other point
the microsoft “licensing fee” is 3x as much – that’s the problem of FRAND as fairusefriendly indicated.
there were articles lately about how Google/Motorola was going to break the web because of video codecs.
they, Microsoft, seemed appalled that Google/Motorola would ask for a percentage of the sale of windows (~2%) for these codecs.
pot, kettle.
at least they, Google/Motorola, are telling them which items they need to license, as apposed to other they, Microsoft, who are forcing ANdroid makers to pay them but won’t say why (without an NDA)
Re:
to add to my own comment, i suspect that the point will be to either: recover cost of android licenses that MS is forcing, or two, to leverage a deal, you lay off, we lay off.
i hope for two.
Re:
Microsoft is focused on infringement of patents that it has not contributed to any industry standard. And Microsoft is making its patents?standard essential and otherwise?available to all Android manufacturers on fair and reasonable terms. In fact, more than 70 percent of Android devices are now licensed to use Microsoft?s patent portfolio.
That’s not the argument I was making though. I agree that I’d like to see Google drop its rates. Hell, I said that I’d prefer to see them take away the licensing requirement entirely.
I was just pointing out that it might not be that simple.
Separately, the fact that 70% of android devices are now licensed by Microsoft doesn’t mean anything here, other than that Microsoft has successfully threatened lots of companies. That’s a separate issue.
In an ideal world, I’d prefer to see Microsoft not getting money from Android and having it compete.
Similarly, I’d prefer that Google drop the licensing requirements for its patents rather than join “the dark side” and being a patent aggressor. But, given the history we’ve seen of so many companies attacking Google on anti-trust grounds — including for doing things like offering goods for free, it seems reasonable to think through the consequences of it doing so.
You’ll never find me “defending” anyone charging high licenses for patents, and I’m certainly not defending Google’s practices here. I just think it’s not as simple as “hey, just lower the prices!” because there would likely be repercussions there as well.
Name-Calling is OK for schoolchildren who don't know better
?but it won’t help you or your readers understand how these cases will work thru courts.
Yes, Microsoft has been aggressive in insisting that others license its patents. But you don’t have to ignore the fact that the whole mobile industry has been rife with this behavior since long before Microsoft was a player.
Look to the citations that Motorola blocked Japanese rivals in the 1990’s by refusing to license GSM patents. This appears to me the first realization that if a standard was going to be successful, the authors of its patents would have to declare them essential in the open, and guarantee that they would be fairly licensed. They have played hardball since their first involvement in standards, but the societal standards have changed.
Motorola knows the obligations it made to the UN’s ITU and the NGO ISO/IEC’s MPEG (which ?own? the h.264 standard) because a Moto rep at one time chaired the committee that brought the standard together. MPEG has a clear FRAND policy (?reasonable? was not explicitly defined, but NonDiscriminatory was clearly laid out as offering it on the same terms to all) and I can’t imagine any tortured reasoning reading of history under which Moto has been charging the billions of other h.264 applications 2.X% . Nor can Motorola’s targeting of a single rival for this ridiculous fee be seen any other way than a tit-for-tat discrimination that is explicitly what the h.264’s non-discriminitation pledge was meant to preclude.
Maybe there’s some way that Moto will be actually able to defend this claim, but US courts have found industry FRAND pledges to be legally binding on all patent holders? look at the RAMBUS story for a famous error by a company illegally asserting standard-essential patents, or read the Western Wisconsin order in Apple v Moto for explicit citations. This looks like Moto heading into a PR disaster and possibly some serious damages (courts have stripped patent-holders of rights when they abuse FRAND), all for some short-term messing with Microsoft’s legal team.
So another read is that Moto has been aggressive with FRAND patents for a couple of decades, and while it should have no trouble asserting its non-standards-essential patents such as push email, this one looks like a big loser for a firm that knows it won’t win.
Despite Microsoft being a big bully that supposedly started it first. Waaaaah!
“Fighting over patents doesn’t help bring any new innovations to market. It just diverts money to the lawyers.”
But lawyers bring new and innovative lawsuits to market!!!
Antitrust law needs to go
Mike, you write: “Keep the rates as they are, and they’re violating antitrust rules by charging too much. Cut the prices or free up some of the patents, and it’s an antitrust issue for leveraging their position and “dumping” in the market.”
As others have pointed out, under antitrust law, if you charge a low price, you can be charged with monopolization by predatory price cutting. If you charge the same as others, you can be charged with collusion. If you charge a high price, it’s a monopoly price that you can only charge because you have achieved a monopoly position. Damned no matter what you do.
Re:
You are, however, bypassing the FRAND vs. non-FRAND patents. Are you a lawyer who understands the difference between these types? Are you also aware of difference that Google/Motorolla charge for their FRAND patents vs. others with patents in the same group/industry/area? Why not spend some time and educate yourself before shaming anyone or anything?
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No, he’s an economist with an eye on the often presented fact that (software) patents are bad for the economy, society and innovation. The fact that you think you need to be a lawyer to be able to grasp these concepts says a lot.
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mike your focusing on the wrong part of the quote
Microsoft is focused on infringement of patents that it has not contributed to any industry standard.
key word is not
so microsoft “sky high” rates are for technology that is not part of industry standard
While moto/google disputed patents ARE part of a standard.
That the huge difference, innovating a solution around microsoft patents is ok
innovating a solution around google patents get you bitch slapped for not playing nice with the standard (which is the point of FRAND).
I have given MS enough money
Just as an aside in response to John Doe’s comment, there is an excellent alternative to MS Office. It’s called LibreOffice. You might want to look into it sometime.
I have given MS enough money
Hey, Anonymous Coward: believe in acting morally? Great!
Swallowing the self-serving jizz from Google apologists uncritically? Really? How can you claim to be motivated to do the right thing when you turn a blind eye to others’ rough treatments?
You don’t have to ignore the fact that Moto has LONG been aggressive with its radio and software patents. In fact, is seems the whole concern about ?Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory? was started because of Moto’s blocking rivals by controlling the GSM standard.
Nor the fact that Google pretty much destroyed the innovators who created the java language they use, when they pulled the rug out from under Sun’s freemium model. Pretty nifty: propose a joint venture, get cooperation, then offer the product in a way that serves your interests perfectly, but puts the final nail into Sun’s coffin by trashing its ability to sell java ME. That’s something you’re endorsing?
I’m a big believer in looking at the bigger impact of MY actions, but this astroturf crap claiming everybody else besides the Google Tribe are Bad Guys is just too dishonest to stomach.
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I agree with you entirely.
However, that’s not to say that dealing with a tough situation is going to hold Microsoft back from spewing everything they can to make google sound like an evil entity here.
The amount of FUD surrounding this matter has been as atrocious as ever.
Only Lawyers Grok it? Hah!
My training is as an economist (now work in Finance, but was formerly a software developer). The issues here are not trivial, but they’re a LOT easier to understand than say, java.
Patent-holders are given a limited (20 year) monopoly on their inventions. But when they help write the h.264 standard, and declare that those patents are essential to the standard, they voluntarily promise to license their work on FRAND terms. (Similar on other standards-essential patents, at least since Moto abused its GSM patents in the 90’s and standards bodies realized that nobody would accept a standard infested with land mines, so required patent-holders to limit their rights or else see their patents NOT included in standards.
No legal-speak at all required! Actually, pretty easy, and more friendly to the notion of a shared community advancing the state of the art for all, while still giving inventors such as Motorola fair compensation for their work. Firms that contribute their patents to a standard may give up some control, but in exchange they get (in the case of GSM and h.264) literally billions of licensees.
yet all three are protected in delaware
gotta thank those delaware courts for ensuring that basically you can get away with anything when it comes to antitrust.
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actually, a bit easier than that. Moto voluntarily obligated itself to license its patents to any and all comers on FRAND terms. They have exclusive right to their patents ? they’re all about short-term monopolies ? but they signed away unlimited rights in exchange for MPEG pushing their particular innovation to literally billions of TV receivers, videocameras, DVD players, etc.
This is a simple case of breaking its contract pledge to the h.264 standard-holders, in a way that reeks of anti-trust abuse. Can’t see how this ends well for Moto, especially as it came just days after both the DoJ and EU Competition Commission said they were especially sensitive to exactly this type of abuse.
Antitrust law needs to go
Translation: No market.
Microsoft the great improver.
Microsoft hates OPP (other people’s patents) because what they do and they do it well is take what other’s have done and improve on it by throwing lots of money at it.
Think Office, Every OS, All of their Development tools.
Hell they even like to take a great Product like Aloha Bob’s PC Relocator (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/the-return-of-pc-relocator/163) and then strip it of features and call it Windows Easy Transfer.
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Fair enough. However, and this might be the key issue, is that Microsoft have, in the past 24 months, sent companies who make mobile phones threatening letters, requesting that people not open negotiations until an NDA has been signed. This has an actual documented basis.
So it’s kind of hypocritical for them to go after someone else claiming Anti-trust and Patent bully of Google, provided no evidence tot he contrary comes out. I much rather trust Google in this matter over Microsoft based on past experience.
I have given MS enough money
As an avid linux user (Gentoo fulltime on the desktop and Slackware on the server, some CentOS here and there for fun) I can firmly say that LibreOffice is a steaming pile of crap, though completely free and good in intention.
I have given MS enough money
Walt, keep believing ONLY the MS side of the story and be sure to parrot it exactly. Never look at the full picture. Then you will be protected from all the Evil Freetards who want to destroy the Internet.
I have given MS enough money
@Arthur, maybe I should’ve been more explicit: I find that TAKING SIDES prematurely ? before you understand a reasonable amount of the facts ? is the big problem here.
I’m not defending Microsoft as a corporation, not even citing any of their objections they raised. I have no reason or connection that’d lead me to do so, and if you ever saw my posts at other sites, you’d realize how ridiculous your claim is.
My concerns are only a bit conservative: that companies honor their contracts, follow the law, and don’t engage in unscrupulous marketing. Any company should have PLENTY of wiggle room within those even-handed standards, but I’m happy to call Moto (and Google, which has *explicitly* sanctioned Moto’s FRAND abuse) out when they haven’t met those easy standards.
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It’s only hypocritical if you believe that there are not BIG DIFFERENCES between FRAND and non-Standards-Essential patents.
The US Constitution explicitly calls for giving inventors a (time-limited) monopoly on their work. Patent-holders are given TOTAL FREEDOM to sit on an invention, sell a zillion widgets that competitors can’t build, (or uniquely run a dataing service based on Singlar Value Decomposition!), or license to other firms at vastly ?unfair? terms. In the Constitution.
But Moto voluntarily signed away those rights when they declared their h.264 work essential to that standard. Within h.264, they have promised to let any and all use it on FRANDly terms.
*YOU* may not like Microsoft’s stance, but that is not to say it is hypocritical for Microsoft to exercise its constitutionally-guaranteed right, while accusing Motorola of breaking its contract with all potential customers of h.264, by suing somebody they want to play rough with. Many companies *ARE* hypocritical but it’s all legal and people who call out hypocrisy never seem to balance all the players; they’re playing a children’s game of ?he did it first!? that we parents try to help them grow out of.
If Microsoft’s complaints are judged unworthy, the EU will reply, ?tough. You can stew over how you don’t want to pay Motorola many billions of dollars a year, and either rip out h.264 support from your products, or work it out.?
That won’t be your or my call, however; it’ll be done by the EU and US regulators who we have given the power to enforce the laws this way. So let Microsoft make all the false claims they want. If they are racketeering, they’ll get slapped down. It’s just that the evidence we all see suggests just the opposite. Moto hasn’t said a word why what they’re doing is legal/fair, and when Google wrote about Moto’s policies, the EU expressed explicit concern about patent abuse. So I think the ?tough? scenario is pretty unlikely. I can’t imagine what Moto/Google thinks it’s gaining here.
PS breaking news that a German appeals court has overturned Moto enforcing its FRAND-pledged patent against Apple. Despite what either of us think about Apple’s and Moto’s patent aggressiveness, they couldn’t support an injunction based on the same type of patent ? one pledged as FRAND ? that Microsoft complained about.
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Good thing that Google never uses phrases like ?a draconian future where one man, one company? controls the internet!
Helps me know that THEY’RE never evil; it’s just their competitors who are!
Antitrust law needs to go
Nice thing about your post here, and Mike’s comment as well, is that nobody will think you’re practicing law without knowing what you’re talking about.
No, it’s obvious that a real lawyer (economists, too!) understand simple facts about what makes our economy tick, which you haven’t bothered to consider.
If it were a real consideration about predatory pricing, Oracle would’ve sued Google out of existence for giving away a mobile OS that was derived from java ME. They haven’t, because that simple-minded complaint just doesn’t hold water.
But keep having fun claiming that the system is so broken that Moto has to break the laws to survive. All the girls here will think you’re really manly for beating your chest this way!
I have given MS enough money
I don’t think you read the article. While it would be a great idea if Moto/Google simply donated those patents license free, there are read problems with that or even lowering the price. Read the article.
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Do you have a link to that report please? I appreciate your input on this.
More recently, of course, Microsoft has been demanding license fees for its patents from a variety of companies making use of Android — to the point that some have argued Microsoft makes more off each Android installation than each Microsoft Phone installation.
It would obviously cost more to actually implement a patent in a working product than to merely license it out to others, so the fact Microsoft is charging more for a few patents than their entire product–which would contain many other patents too–is fairly damning. Microsoft is either price dumping their OS to undercut the licensing cost they imposed on Android, or aggressively overpricing their licenses to dissuade OEMs from using Android. They could charge a fair price and let the OSs compete fairly, but no one really wants their mobile OS anymore. They know that ship has sailed. It’s easier to milk the profits of a competitor who has built their own market, knowing people would actually pay the high licensing, than to make a competitive product and to rebuild their once successful market which they milked to death and left languishing in mediocrity for many years.
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Dunno what exactly you mean by “report”, but here’s the breaking news:
http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2012/02/motorola-cant-enforce-standard.html
You can gain a better background from Ars Technica’s recent coverage of this area, which includes the FRAND issues our economist friend has evidently missed, else he’d be soapboxing against Motorola’s actions as well, were he consistent.
Name-Calling is OK for schoolchildren who don't know better
Also Motorola wants that 2.5% tax to be based on the total cost of the device, not the portions (eg, chips) that utilize the patents.
I have given MS enough money
Just re-read it and yes, still have the same sense: the author is justifying Motorola’s actions, which may be (looks to me as if they are) illegal, based on innuendo and claims of ?he started it!? against Microsoft.
Truth of those claims is irrelevant to a court of law, or to the EU Competition Commission, who will investigate Microsoft’s claims of Motorola abusing its patents. Just as trash-talk on a football line doesn’t justify ripping somebody’s helmet off, Microsoft’s aggressive patent policies don’t rise to the level of concern that Motorola’s and Google’s have.
Go ahead and wish for a world where companies do things out of the goodness of their hearts ? I could hope that years ago, Google got Stanford to donate the PageRank patent to the public ? but it ain’t happening because you think it should, and it ain’t NOT happening because Google is under attack by Microsoft. That’s a red herring in understanding where this story goes.
(And besides understanding what is likely to happen, *not* watching propagandistic half-truths or downright dishonesty is my only other reason for tuning in and commenting.)
I have given MS enough money
Oops, forgot to note: the thesis that Moto would be acting illegally by asking MPEG-LA to license its work as part of the patent pool that maybe 99% of all h.264 patents are in?
Utter garbage. No correlation to Planet Earth in 2012, except that the opposite has happened, and might again. Driven by who-knows-what feverish brain or mealy-mouthed justification of Google’s statement that drew a sharp rebuke from both EU and DoJ. (And you can Google those; I’m not making up fantasies!)
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Maybe you saw an Ars thread that was different from the ones I’ve visited recently. They are replete with false and baseless assertions, some bordering on slander, and the usual level of tribalistic My Side Is Right chest-beating. Maybe one post out of ten made an assertion that could be backed with evidence.
The articles themselves are nicely factual, but even the one about the DoJ and EU greenlighting Google’s Moto acquisition? The DoJ press release was more direct, clear and understandable, IMHO.
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Thanks for that. That makes Motorola guilty of being hypocritical. Is it also MotoMobility involved in that lawsuit, though? I’m positive that that’s the section that Google bought.
LibreOffice is a steaming pile of crap??
Really? Why? Because I find it very useful with ODF as its native document format, I was able to modify my automated time and billing system to use the odfpy Python library to automatically generate invoices in LibreOffice Writer format, so I could do some minor manual tweaks in the word processor before sending them out.
Most Microsoft Office users still seem to be on Office 2003, which was the last version before the appearance of the infamous Ribbon. And of course the compatibility problems between versions of Microsoft Office also make it hard for users to upgrade.
Are you a lawyer who understands the difference between FRAND vs. non-FRAND patents?
Do lawyers actually understand the difference? Because as far as I aware, nobody else does.
They could charge a fair price
What would be a fair price? Whatever a free, competitive market will bear. But patents are, by their nature, monopolistic and anti-competitive. Therefore how can there ever be a fair price for them?
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Ummm try this out: if MMI doesn’t own the part of the biz that developed these patents, how could it be suing others over them?
Or, if Motorola wanted to split into two businesses that BOTH were going to succeed, why would they take their GSM experts and bury them in the wrong part?
I don’t know the legal particulars, especially as I’m not terribly worried about hypocrisy. Just saying that MMI *is* the logical successor that has been operating in the mobile arena.
Are you a lawyer who understands the difference between FRAND vs. non-FRAND patents?
Friend, here’s your Expert Tip of the Day: type ?Wikipedia.ORG? in your browser bar, then ?FRAND? in the Wikipedia search bar. Capitalization is Optional and just for Emphasis! Be sure you don’t actually put quote marks in the address you type!
They could charge a fair price
At least At one time, MPEG explicitly left ?fair? to the concerned parties. This seems to have worked for over 99% of all the deals. It seems there’s not been the need to set up arbitration boards or the like, so of companies can’t agree they go to court. As Moto has done.
This commercial disagreement seems to have the Cheerleaders on one side or the other just terribly upset, I guess because they have to justify why their guys still have white hats despite doing things they attacked the other guys for doing just a few weeks back.
It is to laugh at people who answer to no higher loyalty than some multi-billion dollar corporation (or another).
Ha. Ha. .
I have given MS enough money
Yeah, because it “looks to you AS IF they are” illegal … that’s it. End of discussion. You’re done.
Pardon me if I don’t condemn people because it “looks to you as if they are illegal”. Things are almost always more complicated then you might think.
I don’t condone bad behavior but I don’t condemn until REAL lawyers and REAL experts have investigated, analyzed and reported on these things. But you go ahead and pontificate and condemn because things “look to you as if”, that’s fine with me.
They could charge a fair price
To be honest, I don’t really agree with the current system either, especially software patents. With the left and right largely pro-corporatism & pro-protectionism anymore–the only difference being that the left at least covers their favoritism with thin veiled “pro-economy” rhetoric–there isn’t much room for a reasonable stance. Given that there’s not much hope for fixing the current system, the best we can get is a “fair price”. Of course, it’s entirely up to the patent holders to come to that conclusion on their own. As long as they see price gouging and multibillion dollar lawsuits as not only profitable but favorable, they’ll continue to shrug off the multibillion dollar losses from the same as the cost of doing business.
Central Thesis is Bogus, Must be Biased.
?While many of us would prefer that Google make a big statement by freeing or opening up many of these patents, the company is actually in something of a ridiculous position: if it does that… its competitors (mainly Microsoft) will claim anti-trust violations by saying that the company is using its market position to undercut the prices that other charge.?
I’m a bit of an expert on random number generation. Perhaps I know more than 99.995% of the world’s population, while 300,000 people know more. So I claim authority in saying that this innovative legal theory is not some random collection of English words. Rather, it is meant to convey an argument, i.e., it has a motivation (in terms of quasi-random numbers, ?is biased.?)
The theory, as far as I can tell, has exactly zero precedent in any discussion of patents, FRAND, anti-trust legislation, recent comments by the US Dept of Justice or the EU Competition Commission. If anything, actually, the opposite: it rejects common-sense and well-established concerns about patent licensing.
So the words didn’t just arise from a cat walking on a keyboard, and they fly in the face of common sense. They must have been written with some purpose that ordinary common sense doesn’t reveal.
I will guess: the writer is trying to show a reason that Google (which explicitly signed off on Moto’s patent actions, to the alarm of the DoJ and EU CC), and Motorola (now rebuffed another time by the Karlsruhe court) still wear the White Hats. Because wearing White Hats is important to telling who are the good guys in 1950s TV shows for adolescents.
We statistician types always have to concede that we may be wrong: this silly claim, contradicted by all the facts, might have been purely accidental. I estimate ? OK, SWAG ? about a 0.01% chance that the writer simply was trying to get some page visits by writing something meaningless.
It would be helpful, Mike, to know why you published this drivel after you got Twitter comments that said your ?theory? had no relationship to reality, from an authority in the field. (Maybe there were more favorable comments, but they didn’t exactly jump out of your thread.)
So readers: Mike is apparently mealy-mouthing behavior by Motorola that he can’t find a sensible justification for. He seems to be unhappy that his champions are stuck in something inexplicable. You are reading stuff that the word ?agitprop? was invented for, perhaps inspired by the Department of Propaganda at Google. Or perhaps Mike volunteered to trash his reputation of sensibility for the good of The Cause. Whatever the reason (alas, detecting obvious bias is different from knowing what caused it), this is a rubbish claim.
asdf
Only Lawyers Grok it? Hah!
I hear you and I agree (though this technique seemed to have worked for Rambus). Still the fact remains, patents hinder innovation especially with all the obvious stuff getting approved by the clueless USPTO. That’s also what Monty hints at in his digital media primer for geeks.
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sell a zillion widgets that competitors can’t build
And why can’t they build it? Not becaus they are inept but because the “idea” has been locked up. So even if I come up with my own solution to a particular problem, I have to pay up to someone else. If you don’t think that’s screwed, I don’t know what is.
Name-Calling is OK for schoolchildren who don't know better
“Name-Calling is OK for schoolchildren who don’t know better”
Like comparing Linux to cancer? Got it.
Antitrust law needs to go
No, it’s obvious that a real lawyer (economists, too!) understand simple facts about what makes our economy tick, which you haven’t bothered to consider.
So, economy works because of patents and not in spite of? So M$ never could have come as far was Win95 without software patents? Weird, cause that was roughly the year M$ started patenting.
Central Thesis is Bogus, Must be Biased.
I’m a bit of an expert on random number generation. Perhaps I know more than 99.995% of the world’s population, while 300,000 people know more
Is that the kinda chest-beating you’ve been going on about here in the posts?
They could charge a fair price
This seems to have worked for over 99% of all the deals
But not for the public at large.
Fortunately Microsoft aren’t particularly popular with EU authorities. They’ve been thumped quite hard in the past for their bad behaviour and hopefully they’ll get thumped again for filing malicious anti-trust complaints.
The only obvious weak points other than the British and French governments is the EPO. Which wants to be more like the USPTO. Selling bad patents for a guaranteed profit.
I have given MS enough money
This article is based on a cockamamie legal theory that exonerates Motorola’s behavior (by claiming that ?better? behavior is impossible). It offers a judgement about Moto’s actions. I challenged that mealy-mouthed apology for bad behavior.
I offered reasons why I thought those actions would be slapped down. Those reasons were not so much my opinions about Moto as they were an attempt to understand what was happening. (My first hands-on experience was on a 1970’s-era MC6800 breadboard computer; loved my RAZR; etc.)
When a person offering an interpretation is met with, ?that’s it. End of discussion. You’re done,? it’s pretty obvious that, as I noted earlier, you are not interested in anything other than the answer that suits your preconceptions. We could talk about whether Moto was taking a risky course, based on what you’ve read or otherwise know. But you don’t care because you don’t like the idea that Moto doesn’t walk on water.
Anyhow, it seems unnecessary. Unexpected by me, the EU Competition Commission’s chief Almunia laid out his organization’s intention to stop predations by holders of standards-essential patents in a speech today:
(I added some emphasis for those who can’t find the connection.) Bloomberg News, Business Week and others have the story but the press release of the official text is here.
Usually I like to trumpet that my judgement allows me to see a better semblance of the future than those without it. But here, while I have had clear indications of both the US and EU bodies’ concerns, I had no idea that 24 hours after I volunteered that Moto’s actions might be illegal, the chief regulator for the EU ? the head of the very group charged with balancing the continent’s economic and business interests under their laws ? would echo my concerns by saying that blocking rivals was ?not acceptable.?
So no, the fact that I said Moto’s actions looked risky was NOT all you needed to know to dismiss my thinking. But the fact that you thought so sure ought to let others know how well-grounded your positions are.
Only Lawyers Grok it? Hah!
@techflaws, OSS advocates can point to MANY travesties that are wrought by the patent system. I get that.
But there’s an element of throwing out the baby with the bathwater in the demand to prohibit patents. You look at their history; the fact that some of our great accomplishments (I’ve seen GSM credited as being one of the watershed technological events of all time) are based on the trust and collaboration that patents encourage; the quote from Almunia I cite above; ? all these show that serious people who are pro-competition can like patents, too.
It certainly ain’t the one-sided open-and-shut that some short-attention-span types say, thanks to gratuitous trash-talking by people who are talking up their side in a multi-billion-dollar dispute.
Re:
?even if I come up with my own solution to a particular problem, I have to pay up to someone else.?
Whoever told you that was lying. You might run afoul of somebody else’s patent if you implement their solution, copied or otherwise. But if you really have something innovative of your own, you shouldn’t have any trouble.
What are there now, almost a million different apps for smartphones? And there’s been one troll who’s hit a few dozen devs, plus there must be at least 20 others we haven’t heard of. Even 100 ? 1,000,000 is 0.01%; it’s worse odds than being ?screwed? by a lightning strike, but less likely than having some careless/drunk/never-shoulda-been-driving driver plowing into you.
Don’t get blinded by all the Big Boys elbowing each other over billions. Small entrepreneurs are basically not worth the trouble; even for the cockroaches who call themselves Lodsys, developers got support/help from Apple (and others?) who can’t have some troll harming their business by ripping off their partners.
Just because certain propagandists are trying to make patents be the end of the world, for their own companies’ interests, doesn’t make it so. Although patent issues *do* arise, the tone of this whole debate strikes me as similar to the contrived problem of illegal voters, riling up the electorate over a basically non-existent problem, for blatantly obvious gain by disenfranchising voters. We should have concern about how well patents work, but for at least a year now, the discussion has been polluted by propaganda.
Are you a lawyer who understands the difference between FRAND vs. non-FRAND patents?
Wait … you?re pointing us to Wikipedia now for an official definition of what ?FRAND? means? Don?t you clever lawyer types have a, you know, official, legal definition that any judge in any courtroom will accept?
Or are you just proving my point, that there is in fact no universally-accepted definition of what FRAND means?
As one of your lot would say, I rest my case.
Re:
You might run afoul of somebody else’s patent if you implement their solution, copied or otherwise
Which is exactly my point. There is no THEIR solution. There is no reason in hell why anyone should be able to lock up ANY solution to a particular problem.
Whoever told you that was lying.
Yeah, strangely I’m getting this feeling with pretty much you said.
Only Lawyers Grok it? Hah!
So what patents really do is encourage collaboration? I guess that’s one way to look at people who managed to get a monopoly on an idea that are happy with the rents they gain from ‘collaborating’ competitors when they not failed to bar them from market entry entirely.
I’ve still seen no credible data to proof that patents are necessary to innovation. On the contrary.
Re:
Guess you’d deny Annie Proulx her Pullitzer for Shipping News. Just a bunch of English words put together a different way. Part of the world’s cultural tradition, so torrent that work wherever, it’s ours, not hers.
Why should John Adams get paid for writing Dr. Atomic? Same notes as we’ve known since the Greeks, plus some nameless performers sawing on fiddles and warbling. Not THEIR performances or work.
That ?genius grant? recipient Emmanuel Saez? He’s no better than I am. Why should he get a big wad of dough for pretentiously offering his ramblings to the world? Isn’t it enough that he gets a steady check from UC Berkeley?
For that matter, what’s this crap about this guy Einstein getting a ?Nobel? prize for discovering that light can bang electrons off a piece of metal? Did he invent the universe? Minimum wage at the Swiss Patent ? oops, we’re abolishing the Swiss Patent Office. Well, he’s dead so we don’t have to give him anything anyway.
Yes, I see the light now: nobody’s work deserves to be personal; from each according to his ability and to each according to his need.
Are you a lawyer who understands the difference between FRAND vs. non-FRAND patents?
Whoops, I’m not really an A/C. Just as I’m not a lawyer. I’ve spent a bit of time in a jury box but that’s about it.
But you asked whether anybody besides lawyers understood the difference between FRAND and ordinary; why would you now trash a perfectly clear writeup on Wikipedia?
?FRAND? is a principle. Call it a Platonic Ideal, with every actual instance slightly different ? just as the definition for a ?human? normally describes a biped but quadriplegics are just as human as anybody else.
Sorry I missed your point that you weren’t looking for information. Next time, you should be clearer that you don’t trust the government regulators or judges who try to protect innocents from depredations by patent abusers. (Oops, another technical term. Not ?child abusers? or any other kind of abusers.)
Cheers!
Central Thesis is Bogus, Must be Biased.
Heh. I didn’t think that a little light-hearted silliness would provoke an ad hominem attack; I thought you’d try to deal with the content.
Go back and read all my posts (or maybe, you have). I think this whole notion of deciding right vs wrong based on what Tribe a given company is from is just the worst way to understand what is happening.
No, I was trying to make the point that the original post is based on a really weird notion, and it couldn’t have just happened by chance. Nobody has provided a word of evidence that it makes sense.
Take away the notion that anti-trust rules are making Moto violate anti-trust laws, and all you have is some recent news that nut just rivals (such as Apple), but also courts (Karlsruhe) and regulatory agencies (Dept of Justice and EU Competition Commission) are attacking Motorola’s FRAND abuse by name.
Now: between a ridiculous theory from Mike exonerating Moto, and a little hot off-the-press, factual information that’s gone negative on Moto, you are worried that some little joke is really the problem? What are you actually prioritizing, the Defense of Fantasy Dept?
I confess to being a bit of a defender of the patent system, while recognizing its flaws. But the point here is that this post is an ill-thought-out mishmash of fantasy that would never survive a minute in a forum not packed with zealots who want to hear why Moto is right, instead of what will happen over the next few months, and why. If you swallow this crazy story, there will be some awfully strange things happening, where the virginal, innocent Moto is attacked by the very people who supposedly love innovation and competition.
Re:
Hehe, funny to see how much totured logic you must employ just to contort my basic sentiment. Of course you still failed how that tackles the problem of anyone being able to locking up stuff just because they “thought” of it first.
Central Thesis is Bogus, Must be Biased.
I thought you’d try to deal with the content.
Oh, so you did not use ad hominems on Mike and others? Way to deal with the content, dude.
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