Microsoft Takes Legal Action Against Barnes & Noble over Android | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Takes Legal Action Against Barnes & Noble over Android

microsoft.com

117 pointsldayley114 comments

Patents are disgusting as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't matter the industry.

I'm in biotech, and despite the tedious work involved in the process of investigative research--despite the sometimes massive materials and labor cost--patents do not make any sense.

In the end, the products of molecular cloning can be distributed essentially just like software. It's just information. You should not be able to corner off and control information space. If I want to work in a given area according to my interest, I should not have to pay royalties or join an exclusive research team.

There's at least a potential defense of patents in traditional industries. When something takes tens of millions of dollars of research to create, there's some case to be made for limited-term exclusivity.

But when it comes to something like UI, which someone hacked up over the course of a few hours... does this justify exclusivity for years?

Patents were created to balance the harmful effect of exclusivity and monopoly with the cost of creating innovation. In software the cost of creating innovation is practically free in comparison to traditional industries, and IMHO the scope of protection needs to be proportionate.

But when it comes to something like UI, which someone hacked up over the course of a few hours... does this justify exclusivity for years?

In theory though that shouldn't justify a SW patent either. It seems like if we really held true to the non-obviousness test things would be better.

Ironically MS has a court case in the Supreme Court to weaken patents, which would in turn makes it easier for BN to overturn MS's patents.

Developing a new drug costs about $1 billion on average, from initial research to final testing and regulatory approval. A temporary monopoly of several years seems entirely appropriate, even necessary if you expect private industry to be involved in pharmaceutical research.

Or so they keep telling us anyway:

Does the pharmaceutical industry exaggerate their R&D costs?

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/21/does-the-pharmaceuti.ht...

From the first comment on that article:

I never post here, but after seeing this, I just had to. The Light article is very biased and disingenuous - they have an agenda that's obvious from the tone of their text. For a realistic rebuttal, check out: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/03/07/the_costs_of... http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/03/08/that_43_mill...

There are many other realistic, balanced rebuttals to the Light article out there as well. I've worked in the the biotech and drug industry (10 years) and am currently an academic. I've been on both sides of the fence and have a realistic perspective on how much it costs and how tough it is to discover and develop new medicines. The Light/Warburton figure is WAY off.

Note his rebuttal is mostly addressed to their own suggested $43 million figure, rather than disputing that the original $1+ billion figure is correct, as he seems to agree with the part of the paper discussing the problems with that number.

There's an couple of orders of magnitude between the estimates, so it's entirely possible for both to be WAY off.

Incidentally Pipeline is a blog I highly recommend if you are interested in chemistry or pharma.

Then you discover that pharma spends 4 time as much in marketing than research. Kill patents, crush this evil, ugly beast!

Without patents, companies that wanted to maintain a research lead would not publish. Information would be scarce, researchers would end up re-inventing a lot. With patents, a lot of information is public, but if you want to use it directly, you have to pay.

Dammit Microsoft, just as I was starting to feel sympathetic towards the underdog smartphone player, you pull something like this.

Not their first time - Motorola and HTC were the first ones.

They tried branding themselves as the underdog with Bing too; but somehow I have trouble picturing them as the underdog.

You can do business with them, you can buy their products, but they don't deserve sympathy. No company does actually; you should treat them just as they treat you.

Here's a more comprehensive infographic of who is sueing who. http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/infographic-whos-suing-w...

Nothing to feel sympathetic for anybody. They are all in the business to make money.

There's one thing I will point out on that diagram: there are no arrows emerging from Google. Not that we should feel sympathy for them, and perhaps it might just be that they don't have enough of a portfolio, but I think it's worth noting all the same.

That most probably means one of two things:

1. Google hasn't got any relevant patents (unlikely)

2. Google has a number of defensive patents in other things, and have threatened to countersue anyone who comes after them (like Sun before Oracle), which explains the cowards going after the smaller manufacturers instead.

Actually, to my knowledge Google has no history of ever suing over patents, not just in the mobile space but in search - where Google holds some very important patents.

Or am I forgetting something?

Google actually has very few patents. Which makes sense. You own and generate a lot of patents if

1. You're interested in shaking-down others (IBM comes to mind)

2. You've written a big cheque to someone who shook you down and now you're trying to defend yourself.

#1 certainly doesn't apply to Google - not yet at least. And I don't think that Google has been badly burned in a patent dispute with anyone yet, so it doesn't look like they've made generating defensive lawsuits a big priority yet.

One source on the web from a couple of years ago says that Google's name appears on only about 190 patents in total. I did a search and was able to find ~600 patents with Google as the assignee. The same search yielded ~3700 patents for Apple, ~17000 for Microsoft, and ~64000 for IBM. Apparently Apple was issued more than 700 patents in 2010 alone, versus Google's 282. For the last few years, this is how many patents some of these companies have been issued:

#2010: Apple 722 Google 282 Microsoft 3305 Foxconn/honhai 1885

#2009: Apple 399 Google 143 Microsoft 3160 Foxconn/honhai 1310

#2008: Apple 254 Google 60 Microsoft 2310 Foxconn/honhai 1005

#2007: Apple 157 Google 35 Microsoft 1958 Foxconn/honhai 673

#2006: Apple 133 Google 22 Microsoft 1614 Foxconn/honhai 653

#1999-2005 Apple 843 Google 14 Microsoft 3643 Foxconn/honhai 3262

Searching through some of these patents is really discouraging. I remember that when Apple brought their suit against HTC (really, against Android and Google), there were a lot of armchair lawyers here on HN and elsewhere claiming just how obvious some of the patents that Apple was weilding were. At the time I actually believed that some of them had merit. But looking through some of these patents, especially some of the Foxconn ones, is there anyone who really believes that the front bezel design for a PC case (http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/D512721.html) or the particulars of a generic USB stick (http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/D537819.html) should be patentable? Some of the stuff that I've been looking at over the last hour makes Apple's and Microsoft's patents look like Bell's patent on the telephone.

The patents that start with "D" are design patents, not utility patents. I don't really know how big a problem they are. It seems like it would be pretty easy to avoid them if you knew about them, although how you would know about them all I have no idea.

My understanding is that a design patent is really only any good against a near-exact copy of the design.

Did you notice a trend in the patents GOOG has received over time?

Most of the companies being sued over mobile patents are bigger than Google.

Err, no.

Apple is bigger than Google, but the others are all smaller, generally considerably so.

Samsung probably gets close, but I can't work out the valuation of the whole Samsung corporation. If I'm understanding the company structure correctly the Samsung Electronics subsidiary is valued at $19B [1], vs $185B for Google. Nokia is $31B.

Edit: Unless you meant bigger on the linked graphic? In that case, yes, you are right. But that only indicates revenue (from mobile, in early 2010), not profits or valuation.

[1] http://www.google.com/finance?q=SEO%3A005930

Another measure would be number of employees. Google has 24k. Bigger on the linked graphic are Oracle (105k), Nokia (132k), Hitachi (360k), Sharp (64k), LG (177k), Apple (49k), Samsung (276k), and Motorola (60k).

Another measure would be total assets. Google has $58 billion. Oracle has $60 billion. Hitachi has $95 billion. Nokia has $57 billion. Apple has $75 billion. Samsung has $294 billion. Microsoft has $86 billion.

I would consider total assets to be a better measure than market cap when it comes to determining whether the company is larger or smaller in the context of a lawsuit.

The total assets point is good, and would play well to a jury. But to be fair, total liabilities should be deducted. Samsung, for example has over $180B in liabilities (presumably those valuable electronics fabs are debt-financed)

To be honest, the assets, revenue or the total employees of a company don't really matter in this case.

Google is a relative new comer to the mobile space. All the other companies have been entrenched for a long time and have a much bigger patent portfolio compared to Google.

Just my personal observation, but I think Google would lose a large fraction of their engineers if they used a patent in any way other than a defensive countersuit. (Someone correct me if there's a previous case I'm missing.)

> They are all in the business to make money.

My problem here is that some make money building stuff people want. Others make money by extorting those who make stuff people want.

Agree. That's why GOOG and MSFT both sued GeoTag earlier this month. http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/03/03/google.and.mic...

This isn't a new thing. I would bet HTC's cost on the license was probably pretty cheap, but if you don't make a WP7 device, then expect to pay some cash. I do find it strange I haven't seen anything from Google on this sort of thing.

> just as I was starting to feel sympathetic

Surely you are not serious.

They really had been failing in such a pathetic sort of way with most of their recent "innovations" that I, too, did feel a tiny bit sorry for them.

But not any more. Now that they have dared to attack real innovative companies that actually make and innovate stuff that people want to buy that faint spark of pity is gone.

Dammit U.S. and international patent law for enabling Microsoft to pull something like this.

That should teach you.

The hypocrisy of Microsoft is really a turn-off.

Microsoft statement on this new action against Barnes and Noble:

Their refusals to take licenses leave us no choice but to bring legal action to defend our innovations and fulfill our responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard the billions of dollars we invest each year to bring great software products and services to market?

Then there is their statement regarding their appeal of the $290 millions dollar judgement against MS for infringing on i4I.

This case can be summed up in one world – balance,” Microsoft’s David Howard, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel for litigation, said in a statement. “The current approach taken by the Court of Appeals improperly tilts the scales to reward invalid patents. That approach needs to be corrected in favor of a system that ensures the process for obtaining and defending patents is clear, reasonable and doesn’t unduly burden the system or innovation.

What hypocrisy? The two quotes you give do not show any sign of hypocrisy.

Microsoft's position is that software should be patentable, but that the standard for obtaining software patents is off and the courts are not doing a good job dealing with them. Both of the quotes you give are consistent with this view.

And by trying to publicly extort a company that hasn't access to endless legal resources that made a really successful product using patents that are blatantly obvious and/or a rehash of things invented by others a long time ago while at the same time pretending patent reform is needed is what?

And to think someone just ruined their reputation by putting Microsoft in the top 5 more ethical companies in the software business...

In the first instance they are wrapping themselves in the righteousness of their claims which are at best questionable. In the second they are lamenting how wrong it is that a company has to defend itself against spurious claims.

The mens rea for hypocrisy is that the alleged hypocrant believes one thing and is acting in a way inconsistent with that belief. They may be wrong about their belief, but that is irrelevant.

You assert that Microsoft's claims are questionable. Assuming that is so for the sake of argument (I have not looked at the patents so cannot say), I see no reason to believe that Microsoft thinks their claims are questionable.

In your first case, they likely believe that they have valid patents which they are asserting against an infringer. In your second, they believe that invalid patents are being asserted against them.

There is simply nothing hypocritical here.

EDIT: had the word "patentable" in the second paragraph where it should have said "questionable".

If we were in a court of law then I would agree with you but since we are not in a court of law I will hold to a different definition of hypocritical: applying a criticism to others that one does not apply to oneself.

patents:

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=deQCAAAAEBAJ&dq=5...

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=JvQAAAAAEBAJ&dq=5...

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=DwEJAAAAEBAJ&dq=6...

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=oKgVAAAAEBAJ&dq=6...

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=jJcVAAAAEBAJ&dq=6...

I actually took the time to read those patents, and as broken as I thought the US patent system was, I didn't realize it was that bad. One of the patents is actually a patent on displaying a temporary loading animation when a browser is downloading rather than having a dedicated loading status indicator. Another patent is for displaying a document while the background image is downloading rather than waiting for the background image!

True story. I worked on Hewlett Packard's first digital camera project around '97 or so. We were getting ready to freeze the firmware when the final legal review turned up a patent that another company (don't remember who, wanna say Samsung?) had been granted. The patent covered menus on the back of a digital camera where the cursor moved across menu items when you pressed up and down. We were asked to scramble and make the menu move underneath a static cursor to avoid exposure.

The best part was that the patent was granted sometime around 1980, if memory serves.

Warning: if this article already made you angry, reading the actual patents will turn your rage up to 11.

These are some of the most general and obvious patents I've seen used in a lawsuit like this in a while.

The question is are these methods general and obvious only because it's been the norm for almost 20 years? I would say, yes.

Display a loading image while waiting on a document? The only "innovation" that got them the patent was that they claimed displaying a smaller image on a smaller screen was somehow groundbreaking.

Don't wait for a background image to finish downloading before displaying web page text? Who would think waiting was a great idea in the first place?

I don't think either of these is somehow an feat of software engineering that should grant them the ability to extort money from companies creating innovative software in 2011.

A more appropriate question may be whether those methods would be general and obvious in present day if they hadn't been invented 20 years ago.

I would say, yes.

tl;dr:

  1) partial pdf display to avoid image download
  2) application task bar (+ hot key application switch)
  3) "loading" gif
  4) selecting text and resizing selection area
  5) annotating pdfs by using a separate index file

Pretty basic stuff, and Apple uses all these techniques. I wonder if they are already tithing.

Apple uses all these techniques. I wonder if they are already tithing.

IIRC Apple and Microsoft have a cross-licensing agreement. Plus, it's in both their interests to kill Android and establish a duopoly without any pesky suggestions of user freedom. (For the same reasons, I'd expect Verizon to not have anything bad to say about AT&T swallowing T-Mobile).

The idea Microsoft will make Vista Phone 7 successful by suing every Android device maker is ludicrous at best.

But it seems they will get away with getting some money for every Android sold.

Sad, really.

Doug Engelbart isn't listed on any of these patents, funny but I'm pretty sure his NLS system would make him the inventor of most of this.

Not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. It presumably adds weight to consolidating Android patent litigation (Apple vs HTC, Oracle vs Google, Microsoft vs B&N, Etc.)

On a related note, when I was first pitched on the idea of OpenMoko and 'Open Source Phones' in general, I responded that the existing infrastructure anti-bodies wouldn't take kindly to something like that existing. When Google went there with their psueudo-OSS (POSS) product, at least they have the capital to defend against spurious attacks.

So the good news is that all around the table everyone has gone 'all in' (to use the poker vernacular). That suggests to me that this is the end of the beginning. My prediction is that we will have 6 to 10 years of litigation ahead (it is time limited by patent lifetimes in terms of starting new litigation beyond that time frame).

At best, we'll get Google holding out to the end. That will result in a pretty definitive doctrine for creating an open source phone by 2020. At worst, these will collapse into an MPEG-LA or Public-Key-Partners scenario creating a leech like entity that bleeds the public dry, enriches the players, while allowing them to side step direct blame. (such a settlement would most likely 'require' that nobody portion of the fees paid back to the rights holders be public)

Nothing particularly disruptive on the horizon unfortunately. I keep hoping for a 'wifi' smart phone that uses a network built with the white-space bands in the US. Of course they would keep a low profile, given the nature of their threat, but they would also have to raise probably 200 - 300 M$ to deploy and haven't seen that either.

The pessimist in me thinks there will be a run on Vaseline.

This reminds me of Ballmer's claims that Linux infringes on Microsoft patents. They ultimately resulted in nothing, I see this heading in the same direction.

It seems more like a scare tactic than anything else. If they really wanted to go after Android, Google or Samsung would probably be included. Instead, they're going after some lower profile (though still very recognizable) manufacturers. To me that says they want publicity, not necessarily legal results.

I'm afraid not. This is something else entirely. Microsoft is rapidly losing their relevance and they're fighting to find a way forward. Something I wrote back in October when the Microsoft/Acacia patent licensing news hit.

"Microsoft has identified patents as the most effective attack against anyone seeking to profit from FOSS. Rather than attack FOSS directly, you dump as much money as you can in to littering the intellectual property space for a given product with patent mines. Step on a patent mine and all of the sudden you’re paying Microsoft (or someone else) for sitting on their ass and building a patent portfolio rather than innovating with any real products."

http://www.bradlanders.com/2010/10/08/the-new-patent-troll-e...

I'm in no way a lawyer so I hope what I say is at least feasible, but I would like to see Google come to the defense of their platform, after all the widespread adoption of android is what has it where it is today. Especially in terms of market share.

As a software engineer I pledge to never work for or in any other way assist the following companies as long as they continue their anti-competitive abuse of software patents that is harming our industry and the future of mobile computing: Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, Kodak, RIM.

Will other devs pledge with me?

This is a fine idea.

I think, along the same lines as a talent revolt, an organization wherein developers can pool a monthly fee to push our interests as an industry that thrives on actual innovation might be in order.

Say $30-$50 a month/dev or other interested individuals to go to funding a 'Patent Defense Fund' for members, building and maintaining a prior art database, and buying useful patents for the use as the little guy's nuclear deterrent.

Does the Open Invention Network accept donations, or companies without many patents to contribute to the pool?

I don't know. The Open Invention Network is Linux centric so it is not really what I was referring to above which would be more of a cross-industry entity.

Ugggh. Since the idea behind patents is to promote innovation, and not prevent it.. why can't that be a measure evaluated in the process of granting or enforcing the patent?

Microsoft should have to provide a compelling argument for how much money went into the 'research' around these UI paradigms, how without that investment these ideas would have never come about, how allowing them time to recoup that investment is better for the world than allowing other entities to copy the work.

In short, we're all collectively allowing these companies to file and enforce these patents ... we should expect them to prove to us that they're worthy.

Or maybe just try disallowing patents altogether for a couple of decades to see how that works out?

Don't get me wrong.. I'm as cynical as the next guy about the patent system.. but I do think the merits of the lucid arguments for it ought to be considered in a re-think. If you're spending loads of money on research to make an idea possible, and that idea is easily copied in a way that undercuts your ability to profit.. then I guess I get that. I just think you ought to have to _prove_ it.

Effectively, this would come pretty close to eliminating software patents altogether... but presumably wouldn't hurt the abilities of biotech, pharma, medical devices and the like where (I assume) the research dollars are often very real.

Mobile is getting too complicated. At last count that I saw:

   Apple: suing 2, being sued by 3
   Toshiba: being sued by 1
   Sony-Ericsson: being sued by 1
   Sharp: being sued by 3
   Samsung: being sued by 2
   RIM: suing 2
   Qualcomm: suing 1, being sued by 1
   Oracle: suing 1
   Nokia: suing 8, being sued by 2
   Motorola: being sued by 3
   Microsoft: suing 3
   B&N: being sued by 1
   LG: being sued by 2
   Kodak: suing 5
   HTC: being sued be 2
   Hitachi: being sued by 1
   Google: being sued by 1
   Elan: suing 1

This is older, but the visual is impressive: http://www.technewsdaily.com/smartphone-companies-in-a-vicio...

Whoa. Looks like the Watson ball.

How is this even legal in the US? - in the UK you can only sue the producer of violating product and not the distributer, and even threatening a distributer without having first won a court case against the producer is illegal (to stop companies strong-arming distributers with patent threats regardless of the validity of the patents which the distributer can't reasonably expected to be knowledgable about).

It seems in this case the lawsuit is against functionality in Android and B&N are merely the distributer.

Microsoft claims that the patents infringed include "natural ways of interacting with devices." I checked my thesaurus and alternative words for natural include: normal, ordinary, everyday, usual, regular, common, commonplace, typical, routine, standard, established, customary, accustomed, habitual.

I thought patents were supposed to be issued only for "novel" innovations?

There's no point being angry with Microsoft as, like any company, their stated goal is to make money. Anger should be directed at the US patent system which creates an environment in which businesses must act this way -- not an entirely fair statement given that companies like Microsoft no doubt influence patent legislation, and do so generally for the worse.

If this bothers you don't rage against companies for playing the game, donate to the EFF https://www.eff.org/ or call your elected representatives.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2... has some more details

It amazes me that anyone really believes that stuff. I posted this comment there, don't know if it'll show up:

If Microsoft truly had "innovated" all this great smartphone user experience, why is it that nobody seems to want a phone with a Microsoft OS?

But the really stupid thing is that Microsoft is far more vulnerable to patent litigation than anyone else at this point. Barnes & Noble can survive a judge's order blocking sales of Nook a lot longer than Microsoft can survive a shutdown of Windows or Office.

The obvious conclusion is that Microsoft itself doesn't believe it can innovate in a fair market competition.

Like stars, the end state for large technology companies is a black hole of litigation and patent trolling.

I think if Microsoft wanted to declare "developer friendliness", they would unilaterally declare that they won't engage in offensive patent actions, and encourage all other companies to do the same. Or, just make it entirely opt-in; they promise not to sue anyone who won't sue them.

I suspect it would cost them not much more than their current startup outreach efforts, and would build a lot more goodwill.

If you can't fight 'em, sue 'em. When will the software patent insanity end?

When it's someone other than lawyers writing the law.

I think if we have someone other than lawyers writing laws things will get worse, not better.

The patent system has serious problems, so does Microsoft Windows. Do you think Windows would be better if it weren't developed by software engineers?

http://www.ladas.com/Patents/USPatentHistory.html

Your analogy doesn't really hold, because software engineers probably use the software they create, so they have an incentive to make it good. Lawyers have an incentive to make laws such that you need more lawyers, which the patent system succeeds at marvellously.

That's not to say that there's really an alternative, just pointing out the perverse incentive structure.

Sorry, but that doesn't make sense. Equally, one could make the case that software engineers have an incentive to make bad/incomplete/burdensome software so that they are still needed to provide fixes/updates. Lawyers also "use" the law, it still applies to them.

The patent situation won't change, as the players involved are too keen of their portfolios.

I think the perverse incentive you point to wrt software is a real one. I think that's why the tools that engineers use are usually the best pieces of software.

I don't think patent lawyers are generally have to use patent law in the same way that software engineers have to use software.

Of course they don't allow the patenting of processes essential to patent lawyering so the analogy doesn't hold.

But my point was that the patent system really is "used" by lawyers and they do, in fact, optimize it for their purposes (e.g., extracting wealth from others who actually produce things of value).

I think the patent system would be better if it didn't exist.

This has nothing to do with Microsoft Windows.

I'm kind of bummed that someone who can't comprehend my post got upvoted way more than I did.

It's hard to guess what the world would be like with no patents, but I suspect at minimum you'd see a lot of obfuscation, such as drugs with impossible to identify active ingredients and devices designed to be impossible to figure out or repair.

Is there a reason for the "Click Here to Install Silverlight" link at the top of the page? Is there a video or something on this page about the legal action, or is it just a friendly suggestion?

Seems to be a standard Microsoft home site thing.

That's the only way someone will install this thing, after all... No other site will do that.

netflix

I'd rather not use Netflix.

And we all know that the web habits of the majority of broadband internet users is primarily based on rbanffy.

I can't speak for the majority of broadband users. I can only say I'd rather not use Netflix than install Silverlight.

I have lived just fine without it anyway and chances are my TV can do it on its own without Silverlight.

You claim that no other site would give a reason to install Silverlight. Someone mentions Netflix, a popular website which depends on Silverlight being installed. You then say that you would prefer not using Netflix to installing Silverlight. Your comment then becomes

1) A non sequitur. Your own choice has no bearing on the last two comments except to voice your own feelings about silverlight.

2) A suggestion that your own feelings for Silverlight reflect the vast majority of broadband Internet users, directly contradicting all available data.

I chose the most charitable interpretation of your comment, as option 1) is clearly off-topic and not relevant to the thread or the article.

> Your own choice has no bearing on the last two comments except to voice your own feelings about silverlight.

You got that partly right. I have no need for Silverlight.

> A suggestion that your own feelings for Silverlight reflect the vast majority of broadband Internet users

Maybe you are reading too much in my comment. Anyway, Silverlight adoption is low, pointing out few people feel the need to install it.

If you can't lead the wave, ride on it.

Or crash it so nobody rides it.

Anyone has a list of the patents in question? It seems like if the description is right, it has something to do with the UI. I was expecting something like the usual patent suit over the FAT filesystem used on SDCards or something like that. This is more serious.

I hope an American lawyer can answer this (or at least someone with a good knowledge of the US legal system).

What can an individual (even one outside of the US) do to effect change in the software patent landscape? Who needs to made aware of the problems in the patent system? How can these people be reached? What will it take to get them to introduce changes that reduce the number of these lawsuits?

Is there anyone running a website dedicated to 1) cataloguing obvious ideas to act as prior art, 2) collecting cases for use in lawsuits involving software patents, 3) systematizing steps for how individuals can make a change?

Does there exist some organisation which acts as an umbrella treaty against patent abuse. For example a centralised pool of patents held by all member companies in the organisation is used as a deterrent against patent abuse, in the event that any member of the organisation is attacked with a patent, all other members attack the aggressor with their patents?

Patents seem to be enough of a thorn in the side of business that it would be beneficial for at least a significant amount of businesses to participate in such an organisation. If this does not exist, why not?

If you don't want to build anything, it doesn't matter.

Patent trolls are basically ghosts with guns. There is nothing to really shoot at to kill.

You can potentially take their gun away by invalidating their patents, they have no big downside risk. There is no profitable software development portion of the company that you can blow up.

Except in this particular instance, and in many other instances, it's not just pure patent trolls doing the abuse. Microsoft (and many of the other players in this war) does actually have a profitable software development portion of the company that could be blown up.

There are patent defense organizations like Allied Security Trust, RPX and the Open Invention Network but it seems like these are for major players and/or have very limited scopes

That's why you never build your business in US...

It really doesn't matter. If you want to sell products into the US or the industrialized world in general, you are put at risk by the patent system.

Sure... But as i see, the patent system in US is a mess. That can make my business fragile : I develop some app and then some troll sues me, so now instead investing in innovation , i have to invest my lawyer !

Maybe you have to do more paperworks in other Countries (ex. Germany) but your business is not in danger because bad use of patents. Sure other countries have also patent trolls but the system is not bad and currupt as US.

What I'm saying is that being based somewhere other than the US does not make you immune to the effect of US patents.

Even if you refuse to sell your product into the US market (good luck), as in this case, your customers can be sued in the US.

Does anyone make generic mobile hardware yet? The concept seems to have paid off for personal computing.

How feasible is this? To have interchangeable and commoditized component smartphones? Probably not feasible at all I would think. The desktop pc gives up a lot of performance and simplicity for compatibility and modularity. But the constraints that they're designed within are pretty simple - maximize performance and minimize price, and try not to pull any more than 15 amps out of the wall. Smartphones need to optimize for CPU performance, component price, power draw, component size, rf stability, and then they still need to have an attractive design to appeal to fickle phone customers. I don't know how much leeway they would have to establish a uniform hardware design to minimize os and driver customization that would be necessary for an installable-os platform.

I disagree. There are some interesting multi-core SoC parts hitting the market, ARM is 'in', the move to solid state storage is effectively complete, and multi-touch screens provide a rich interface without the bulk of keyboards and pointing devices. Go back and look at the OQO, but swap in modern hardware and VM tech. Include 802.11 if it is cheap and efficient enough, but provide a slot for drop-in 4g, bluetooth, DRM (the Nook/Kindle plug... probably not an iPod but maybe a Zune plug), etc. --note that having only one 'net' slot pressures providers to bundle content, allow subscribers to extend connectivity plans to cover a content device... it gets complicated but it both creates a product quality incentive and provides opportunities for providers to profit by differentiation.

Build in something like Xen and plan on syncing the user disk image to the network, and run expensive processes on external devices (or AWS) when available. Dock to your laptop to build the presentation; deliver it from your this thing. Dock the thing to any TV and play a movie, without having to move the content from one device to another. etc. etc. etc.

I fully expect these to be commodity parts made by the likes of Dell or HP inside of 8-12 years.

I fully expect these to be commodity parts made by the likes of Dell or HP inside of 8-12 years.

Setting aside the fact that neither Dell nor HP actually make any of the parts inside their PCs now, I think there are too many separate issues that you're bringing up here. Clarifying,

1. Will netbooks (you mentioned the OQO) be built on modular, user-swappable hardware components.

2. Will smartphones be built on modular, user-swappable hardware components (you said, " 802.11 if it is cheap and efficient enough, but provide a slot for drop-in 4g, bluetooth, DRM ")

3. Will smartphones be build according to a fixed hardware/software HAL that is well specified enough that no OS or driver customization is needed and user-installable and substitutable OS's are possible.

#1 is possible IMHO. A few years ago ASUS was selling a customizable laptop platform that small computer stores could build and sell as their own brand. It was big and bulky and went away quickly, which is always going to be a problem with modular hardware, so I don't see this as ever being very popular. But someone might try it again with netbooks.

#2 is just never going to happen. Forget about it. if you provide a slot for drop-in 4g, bluetooth, DRM, someone else is going to build a competing smartphone with all of that built in but without the bulky connector and housing. It'll be smaller and sexier than your monster-smartphone, and it'll probably have better battery life with the extra internal room for a larger battery. Modularity is irrelevant when you can just include everything that's cutting-edge at the moment and you'll just get a new smartphone in a couple of years under a new contract anyways.

#3 might happen, but I still doubt it. It goes back to what I said about constraints and room for innovation. When something big needs to change with the PC HAL (like USB3), Intel, Microsoft, Dell, and a bunch of others have to get together and formulate something like XHCI to provide a common hardware interface - otherwise every USB3 chip would require a separate loadable driver. In the embedded market and with smartphones, there's no constraint on the hardware interface - you just throw the chip in and then add a kernel driver for it. Time saved, competitive advantage gained.

How much longer would it have taken for NFC to be included in smartphones if Samsung, HTC, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, and others had to get together and hash out a common hardware interface for NFC chips the way PC manufacturers do with stuff like UHCI/EHCI/AHCI/etc? A lot longer. And given that no one expects user-installable and substitutable OSs on smartphones, there's no incentive now or in the future to provide one. And given that a smartphone platform that provides a common HAL is going to be at a competitive disadvantage wrt smartphones with custom hardware, there's no thin end to this wedge.

First, thanks for the nice response.

"Setting aside the fact that neither Dell nor HP actually make any of the parts inside their PCs now"

I was referring to the whole device as a 'part', and don't really expect Dell or HP take over from Broadcom, TI, and so on. Anyone that sells a tablet could sell this.

1: Hopefully not. Ideally, hardware should perform well for the lifetime of the device, without having to swap out any of the internals. I gave up screwdrivers a few years ago.

2: I don't think I said smartphones... but you could use the slot to turn whatever it is into a phone, if you really need it. Personally, I will use something akin to Google voice or Skype over 802.11, but mobile data connections are fine. It needn't be bulky either -- the smaller express card form factor was nice, for instance.

3: Can you run your OS on Xen, etc.? Then everything will be fine. A good prototype device would run an AMI directly from your AWS account... a killer device would be able to expose exotic integrated hardware features when available, but it would be up to an OS to deal with it. Now, that's obviously more difficult, but not as difficult it was ten years ago.

Point taken on the NFC example. In my world though, people only need to agree at the VM level.

I normally defend Microsoft, but then they pull crap like this. This lawsuit dance is ridiculous.

All they really want to do is make Android devices cost more so their fee for software on their own hardware will look competitive.

Interesting how they aren't suing Google directly?

I have listed the patents in my blog post on this: http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/03/microsoft-sues-barne...

1 of them was previously also asserted against Motorola. 4 of them weren't.

Since Microsoft already has 23 patents in suit against Motorola, Barnes & Noble will know that the 5 patents asserted today are but a small selection of Microsoft patents allegedly infringed by Android.

If Barnes & Noble refused to pay (which is what Microsoft says), it's actually a matter of fairness that Microsoft enforces its patents because otherwise those who respect Microsoft's rights would be at a competitive disadvantage versus non-paying infringers.

Jeez Florian, you have come a long way since your campaign against software patents.

A few days ago you blow up the Bionic GPL issue as if it was an unprecedented tactic used by Google (and were soundly rebutted on LWN by the way ;) and now this.

Have you received funding from Microsoft at any point, perchance?

Does it actually make sense to talk about "respecting" "rights" granted to you by a patent before it has been proved in a court of law? There's clearly some disagreement about what "rights" they have or there wouldn't be lawsuits happening to establish exactly what they are.

Does anyone see a gap here for a PatentWar app that runs on Android?

Similar to drug wars but no drugs, just pools of patents :)

they already reached a settlement with Amazon last year. MS is going to get their way with B&N too.

Sadly, it only enables them to troll even more.

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