You know capitalism works when a company gets $5 per handset for doing absolutely nothing. The patent system is totally farcical.
There are absolutely huge issues with the patent system, but Microsoft's patent licensing profits are not among them.
Is this the kind of ideal use of software patents that rewards innovators and end-consumers?
But when it happens to HTC, Samsung, etc it's just: "why shouldn't they get a return from that investment?"
Microsoft (or any other company for the matter) demanding patent royalties after treating to sue a product they had no hand in producing, is wrong.
Earning more money form their patent extortion from a competitor's product than it's own implementation, it's just sad and pathetic.
They should get a return. But nothing they created contributed to Android, so they shouldn't be extorting money from Android vendors.
The patents that Microsoft has been willing to assert publicly against Android are dominated by FAT patents which describe a system for working around the limits of Microsoft's own file system. Nobody wants to use Microsoft's file system for its own merits -- plenty of free systems exist that have none of its drawbacks and Android uses them internally. Android uses FAT only to interchange information with Microsoft systems and others based on their backwards filesystem. The patent system has been abused to allow Microsoft to block compatibility without contributing anything technological. It's a classical failure mode of the patent system which was supposed to promote innovation and publication, not vendor lock in.
2. The oft-repeated "litigating instead of competing" meme is wrong. Windows Phone does compete on the merits. WP devices regularly get decent reviews. Most people who've tried them prefer the OS to Android. Personally I've seen WP work smoother on lower-specced hardware than Android on a more powerful device.
Windows Phone actually did something innovative when it came out and differentiated itself greatly from the the iPhone. Something that, you know, Android didn't bother with until Apple started suing left and right.
Arguably the only reason Android has the market share it has is because Google gives it away for free, because its search monopoly profits allow it to do so. When Microsoft did the same thing with browsers, they were being "anticompetitive", but when Google does it, it's not? If you think Google does not browbeat OEMs the way Microsoft did, look into the Skyhook lawsuit where a whole bunch of confidential licensing agreements spilled out.
3. If Google can attack Microsoft's business model, Microsoft can certainly attack Google's. People here just don't like Microsoft's attacks because they don't like patents in general. I mean, every patent ever is automatically deemed to be "broad" and "bogus", but nobody even knows how patents work.