Microsoft and Google ink SECRET TREATY to end all their patent wars Google and Microsoft have inked a secret deal in which all patent disputes between the mammoth companies will be abandoned. The exact terms of the agreement – as in, who gets what – were not disclosed. Your guess is as good as ours. "Microsoft and Google are pleased to announce an agreement on patent issues," the companies …
Well... Given that we're talking US patents here, we're probably lucky we can still breathe. Although that would most likely be due to some IP lawyer somewhere having a rare attack of "common sense"™, and possibly having advised against enforcing the "method to extract oxygen from air /using a permeable membrane /while operating a /mobile device ** " patent as "ill-advised and likely to impact the potential customer base". Alledgedly.
** other options may apply™
Dear Microsoft
I will consider that you and Google have fully kissed and made up when you openly withdraw your allegations on the patents.
You claimed that software I and others wrote violated your patents. Are you big enough to withdraw your accusations?
To you that might seem like a cool sneaky little bit of business shenanigans - a nice little jostle between you and a competitor.
To the people involved in developing this software, it is a slap in the face. You say we are cheats that "steal" your ideas and are incapable of coming up with good ideas - that we must instead resort to stealing your ideas to be able to do anything useful.
So how about an apology to all the people with skin in this game? We can then consider this matter closed.
Yours Sincerely
Charles
I will consider that you and Google have fully kissed and made up when you openly withdraw your allegations on the patents.
Can't see that happening because it would mean writing them down in the books which might piss off shareholders. Better to take some undisclosed amount of cash and or goodwill now and let the useless patents expire quietly.
Google's Android and Microsoft Windows - it all suggests people are far more worried about Cupertino than they let on.
I suspect part of that must have come from the fact that the OSX App Store now even offers LibreOffice for free. Oops.
Apple and Microsoft have had a patent cross licensing agreement for ages, so they haven't been a threat for them in ages. Apple hasn't ever sued Google over Android, they've only had the well-publicized issues with Samsung and a small scuffle with Motorola. It wasn't stuff in generic Android Apple had a problem with, but stuff that Samsung had added to it or changed in it (see that famous 137 or whatever page document from the trial)
>OSX App Store now even offers LibreOffice for free. Oops.
Collabora offer it - but to push their paid for, albeit cheap, version of the suite which attempts to make it enterprise friendly - it isn't and MS rolls on unabated. Holding up widely trialed and failed projects is bad for FLOSS - point at ubiquitous kernels, Apache and other staggering successes - every time you mention Libre Office a penguin dies.
Apple has already "joined" Microsoft long ago, in the sense of having patent cross licensing agreements with them for ages.
But yeah, maybe now that Microsoft's brave new Windows 10 direction is to collect and monetize user details like Google they know they'll be tromping on a lot of Google data collection patents. In addition, worries about Android infringing on Microsoft patents have lessened since Microsoft appears to be mostly giving up on phones.
It's even been said that Microsoft earns more money from Android than it does its own Windows Mobile operating system
No need to suggest it: Microsoft stopped charging for the licences leaving it with the costs of development, documentation and distribution and no revenue.
My guess is that any of the relevant patents, FAT springs to mind, only have a few years of life left and Google easily has enough cash to run things through all the courts, so continuing the battle promises diminishing returns. Nadella seems to have understood that if you can't beat 'em, you should join 'em and it's easier to get Office installed on phones when you're not trying to sue the manufacturers.
My guess is that any of the relevant patents, FAT springs to mind, only have a few years of life left
Shouldn't that have been expired by now? The European patent info for EP0618540 B1 says
Application number EP19940105169
Publication date Dec 12, 2001
Filing date Mar 31, 1994
Priority date Apr 1, 1993
(link: http://www.google.com/patents/EP0618540B1?cl=en&hl=en)
and in Europe, patents are supposed to run for 20 years after filing date (not granting date, as used to be the case in USA).
But possibly there is some obscure rule that keeps it alive :-(.
Shouldn't that have been expired by now? The European patent info for EP0618540 B1 says
Thanks for the lookup. It may indeed have already expired in Europe, though enforceability of software patents here is doubtful
But MS has launched most of its actions in the US because not only do the courts look more favourably on ludicrous patents, but they can also be used effectively to hinder entrance to the global market. But even there the clock is ticking and, outside of East Texas, opinion about frivolous patents is changing.
Microsoft claimed over 200 patents infringed by Android. Everyone always talks about VFAT, but there's no way that was the major one. If it was, Android would have simply dropped VFAT support and used ext3 or something, and had an Android phone plugged in a PC act like a USB storage device with a virtual FAT (not VFAT) partition that provided a driver for the ext3 filesystem.
Especially now that Android phones are starting to drop SD card slots, they really have no need at all for VFAT.
Why? What stops them from saying "the filesystem on your SD card is not supported" if you plug one in formatted in VFAT and offering to reformat it? The arguments I always heard from Android fans about why SD cards were great wasn't because they were using SD cards for moving files around between PCs or cameras, but to supplement what the phone came with. If the SD card always lives in your phone, why does it have to use a VFAT format?
Stupid but true: Microsoft got the Secure Digital group to write their ridiculously poor and long obsolete dual-filename disk format into the standard. They do that as much as they can. So you can't call it SD if it doesn't have it. Many makers are calling it "flash" now or something.
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This is just Microsoft's endgame play in the Android section of the 'Linux uses our patents' scam. They have already shat all over the smaller players, forcing them to fold and accept licencing agreements under secret terms (some players may have called Microsoft's bluff on court action but agreed to token payments in lieu of fighting a huge court battle).
Now that that's sewn up they come to (secret again) terms with Google; MS can't push them around, but other than rhetoric they haven't directly attacked Google yet - so Google currently has no incentive to fight MS. My money is on this agreement simply establishing that MS won't go after Google, so long as Google keeps it's nose out of the licencing racket.
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