Groklaw nails it: "In other words, [Apple and Microsoft] want to disarm the companies that got there first, built the standards, and created the field, while the come-later types clean up on patents on things like slide to unlock or a tablet shape with rounded corners. Then the money flows to Apple and Microsoft, and away from Android - and isn't that really the point of all this, to destroy Android by hook or by crook? The parties who were in the mobile phone business years before Apple or Microsoft even thought about doing it thus get nothing much for their earlier issued patents that have become standards. Apple and Microsoft can't compete on an even field, because the patent system rewards the first to invent (or now, after the recent patent reform, the first to file). Neither Apple nor Microsoft got there first. Samsung
was there, since the '90s."
To illustrate: Apple is demanding $24 (!) per Samsung device for design patents, while at the same time, Apple also demands that Samsung does not charge more than $0.0049 per standards essential patent per device. This is absolutely, utterly, and entirely indefensible. And then Apple and its supporters have the nerve to claim Samsung is ripping
them off. Yes, this pisses me off, and no, that's not because it's Apple doing it (Microsoft is just as guilty). It's because this is plainly, utterly, clearly, and intrinsically
unfair.
Member since:
2008-09-21
Why not? If its about control fork what is possible with Android! Android is 100% open, the development process may not but that is irrelevant for the result, Android.
It already happened and happens. With TomTom and the FAT patent for example.
They do try to destroy but destroy the commercial success by raising the cost it takes to deploy and ship Linux basex products. As more money it takes till you can make a Linux based product as more alternates, like Microsoft products, become interesting again.
They cannot compete so they try to make the compition unacctractive. If there would be any possibility to succeed by sueing e.g. the Linux kernel community they would do. Its just that they would not succeed with that. They would fail and demage themselfs on that. So they decided to go another way. A way where they are able to end with an agreement behind closed doors at the end of the day, keeping the weapons working (trivial patents which would otherwise be lost maybe) and putting the message out that now even company X pays cause Linux uses Microsoft technology.
Edited 2012-07-30 09:26 UTC