Microsoft Adds ViewSonic, Acer to Android Licensees

Wow. Talk about free cash!

I think I missed an article recently. How come Microsoft gets a $10 cut of the sale of all Android devices? Is this due to patent suit settlements. I wish the article were clearer on why, so I could know this isn't just another Tom's typo.

What does Microsoft have to do with Android? They have their own Winphone 7 or whatever the hell it's called (I don't even give a sh).

Taken from Wikipedia:

"Android is an operating system for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. It is developed by the Open Handset Alliance led by Google."


So I ask you again, where does Microsoft fit into all of this?

"We are pleased that ViewSonic is taking advantage of our industrywide licensing program established to help companies address Android’s IP issues."

What IP issues?

Microsoft thinks it can sue over Android use. This is their way of not having to pay (as many) legal fees, and jump straight to a settlement.

Basically Acer and Viewsonic pay Microsoft a fee for a license to use mobile technology that Microsoft has patented but is (supposedly) present in Android. This way Acer and Viewsonic don't face lawsuits and Microsoft gets to cash in on Android phone sales.

I hate all of this legal extortion, I'd boycott the companies that do it but then I'd be living in a cave

Software should be limited to copyright, not patents, what a joke.

That is so messed up. Microsoft making a profit from Android sales (which is basically Linux).

meh, Nokia have a lot of patents that other companies have to pay to use....
Same thing I guess

what patent exactly is that....?

(legal) extortion

Nokia invented a lot of the things we all use today. Here are some older ones that you may have forgotten about

http://eupat.ffii.org/gasnu/nokia/index.en.html

Didn't know it was that much money. To everyone asking, the only thing I am aware of that must be licenses for every Android device (and iPhone) is Activesync:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activesync

This article assumes you read posts from a while ago and/or know something about Android other than it has a cute name based on sweet food.

Android was made by Google, but some of its code is patent property of Microsoft, so instead of suing Google there is more money to be made by licensing. The hardware vendors have already agreed to pay, over 600 of them in fact.

HTC signed a license deal at the same time Apple just went directly to the lawyers, Apple has got nowhere, Microsoft is getting $400 million a year, Apple is pretty good with the whole litigation racket so you have to assume that this is nothing more than very good business.

When MS releases W8 for tablets you will have people in Frys stuck with a choice, buy an Android or a Windows tablet, whichever you buy MS will get cash.

Microsoft cashing in on Android...just brilliant. I can just see the Google execs heads exploding.

Supposedly? Do you really companies are going to hand over $100M just for the hell of it?...unreal.

I would actually pay to see that, not that I dislike Google specifically, but Eric Schmidt is a slimy twat and I personally would love to push the detonator.

yup, it's truly disgusting. Microsoft has the "alleged" patents but zero code. They did the least amount of work and are raking in millions. But in the end it's the consumers who pay. the phones makers just charge $7-11 more per device. Google doesn't charge a penny for Android too, so they don't even get paid when someone uses it. nice world we live in /sarcasm.

Vote with your dollars and don't buy products from companies that are part of the problem.

Companies like Acer and VIewsonic does not handover the cash. They mark up the price of the device and it is the consumers who end up paying Microsoft. Microsoft has talked about "Android is not free" some time back and now we know how it is benefiting from Android. What is more sad about this is when companies start doing this, we shall see "Chrome is not free", "Firefox is not free" and whatever greedy companies and their lawyer cronies can think of in order to cash in on old dodgy inventions that were created more than 10 years ago (USA laws hold software patent for 20 years). Effectively things like this only benefit big corporations as they have plenty of money to employ lawyers to go through other people products. Small companies or open software developers might have similar claims but due to lack of resource they are unable to discover them.

Maybe software patent should be reformed, like making it shorter, such as 5 years. Or make it such that ALL documentations on software MUST clearly list which part of it is under patent and since when so that developers will not fall into such traps. Failure to do so should result in the patent being void or something.

You truely believe that, a company that has pumped billions into R&D, the worlds largest software company, doesn't have part of it's code in Android.
Welcome to the world of blind ignorance, fanboy...

gone_by_demand: Oh yes, the awesome R&D that went into:

Patent #12343455666:

The use of XML to transmit data between 2 computers.

(and other similarly frivolous and non-patent-worthy M$ patents)


So basically, you're saying that MS should be legally entitled to a monopoly, because it's impossible to write an operating system without infringing on their intellectual property?

Welcome to the world of blind ignorance, fanboy...

The problem is software is math and should NEVER have been allowed to be patented.

Can anybody tell me ANYTHING Microsoft actually invented? Having dominant marketshare is not, in and of itself, patent-worthy. Sure, they have the copyright to basically every technology used in Windows(C#, ASP.NET, NTFS, etc...), but they have roughly zero actual inventions, they've never been the first to do anything. If you take the time to read their patents, it's laughably obvious stuff that only a corrupt Texas judge would consider patent worthy.

Another piece of software that gets licensed out: FAT/FAT32

big business.
a dog eat dog world.
it's like big bank takes little bank..

Shin-san: Maybe you should check out the wiki page for FAT, here's a snippet of it:


U.S. Patent 5,745,902 - Method and system for accessing a file using file names having different file name formats. Filed July 6, 1992. This covered a means of generating and associating a short, 8.3 filename with long one (for example, "Microsoft.txt" with "MICROS~1.TXT") and a means of enumerating conflicting short filenames (for example, "MICROS~2.TXT" and "MICROS~3.TXT"). It is unclear whether this patent would cover an implementation of FAT without explicit long filename capabilities. Hard links in Unix file systems do not appear to be prior art: deleting a FAT file via its long name will also remove its short name. Renaming a file to a "short" name also updates the long file name for coherency; similarly, renaming a file to a "long" name will allocate a new "short" name. In NTFS, hard links and dual names are separate concepts and each hard link has two names. Finally, at the API level, both names are always provided together when a directory lookup is requested from the system; they do not appear as two separate files and do not have to be "matched" to determine unique files.

U.S. Patent 5,579,517 - Common name space for long and short filenames. Filed for on 1995-04-24. This covers the method of chaining together multiple consecutive 8.3 named directory entries to hold long filenames, with some of the entries specially marked to prevent their confusing older, long filename-unaware FAT implementations.




Yeah, that's some mind blowing stuff there, nobody should be allowed to steal those precious ideas... I mean, FAT32 is soooooooooo advanced, it's not like people would have said f*ck FAT32 and used EXT2/XFS/ZFS/any-other-FS instead had Windows with it's 90%+ marketshare supported it... It's not as if Microsoft bent over the entire industry to force their inferior technology on them, rather than support superior open standards. /sarcasm

The reason is getting all this money is they hold several patents for software aspects used by Linux. Since Android is a flavor of Linux, it's using some of those patented software. What will be scary is what happens in the Oracle/Google case where Oracle is going after Google for including aspects of Java that Oracle holds patents on.

Viewsonic & Acer,not for me! I've never been into those two OEM manufacturers & never will.

Once Apple and Oracle get their cut that "free" OS called Android isn't going to be "free" (or cheap) anymore.

But that's nothing. The biggest threat to Android/Google is not MS, Apple or Oracle. It's Andy Rubin himself. Between stealing IP from Apple (when he worked there) and incorporating it into Android to the e-mail where he basically suggests they use Java without a license and defend their decision later (and make enemies along the way) he's making Apple's and Oracle's cases for them.

At least acer & viewsonic pay up,they know what the price is of a court battle.