The monopoly strategy behind the Google/Microsoft mobile patent wars

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/20/vizio-vs-the-world/#capit...

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Patents are there to ensure monopolies last longer. It is a blunt instrument to kneecap the small guy.

Key takeaways from the article:

Microsoft's motivations for the Nortel and Novell acquisitions were clear enough: neither company was making anything. They were just vessels for holding and using government-issued monopolies (AKA "patents").

The point of the patent wars wasn't to guarantee their own profits – it was to deny the other company its profits. It's "strategic sabotage." Microsoft didn't buy Nortel's patents so it could make its own devices – they bought them to stop Google from making ITS devices.

Today, Microsoft has a different kind of strategic sabotage, this one aimed at Facebook – Mouré writes that buying Linkedin "may have been a deliberate response to an encroaching competitor: Facebook."