Microsoft, Samsung Sign Patent Licensing Agreement
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 28th Sep 2011 15:36 UTC
PDAs, Cellphones, Wireless This is the biggest one yet. Microsoft's professional extortion campaign - the third side of the same triangle it shares with Apple and Oracle - has finally hit Samsung. The two companies have signed a patent licensing agreement concerning Samsung's use of Android, in which a rumoured fee of $15 (!) per device will flow from Seoul to Redmond. Not entirely coincidentally, that's about the price of a Windows Phone 7 license.
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RE: Comment by ilovebeer
by westlake on Thu 29th Sep 2011 05:21 UTC in reply to "Comment by ilovebeer"
westlake
Member since:
2010-01-07

It's amazing there are people stupid enough to actually label this as extortion.


Samsung was founded in 1938.

In 2009 The Samsung Group had revenues of $172 billon and 276,000 employees.

But to the geek mind, it must be extortion when Samsung licenses tech from Microsoft.

No matter how rich and powerful this global industrial cartel may be in its own right.

Reply Parent Score: 1

jabbotts Member since:
2007-09-06

If it was actually about justice, Microsoft would be aproaching the manufacturers of Linux and Android (Linux.org and Google). Instead, Microsoft is doing all it can to build legal predicence without directly confronting the legally applicable parties responsible for the alleged infringing products.

What should one call it when you go door to door threating each neibour based on the successful secret threats of the previous neibours?

Nah.. if it wasn't about extortion and exploiting the legal system, Microsoft would detail the patents infringed, aproach Linux.org/Google directly and be open about the details of these agreements.

The NDAs and secrecy makes many think that Microsoft's claims can't actually stand on there own merit as valid non-obvious creations that should be protected by patents. Remember, the patent system was intended to enable inovation and allow secret trade practices to be made public without loss to the practitioner.

Reply Parent Score: 2