ZTE Joins Long List of Android Device-Makers Licensing Microsoft Patents 112
An anonymous reader writes "In its continuing march toward locking up deals with every major Android and Chrome device maker, Microsoft announced on Tuesday a patent-licensing agreement with Chinese manufacturer ZTE. This follows a similar deal last week with the parent company of Foxconn. Microsoft's Deputy General Counsel Horacio Gutierrez said, 'Much of the current litigation in the so called 'smartphone patent wars' could be avoided if companies were willing to recognize the value of others’ creations in a way that is fair. At Microsoft, experience has taught us that respect for intellectual property rights is a two-way street, and we have always been prepared to respect the rights of others just as we seek respect for our rights. This is why we have paid others more than $4 billion over the last decade to secure intellectual property rights for the products we provide our customers.'"
Re:Gotta be kidding me (Score:5, Informative)
The specific patent is for creating 8.3 file names from long file names. Linux works around it by simply not creating 8.3 file names, which seems to be more or less compatible with Windows which is presumably the goal here too.
Those patents will expire soon. Maybe ZTE figured it would be easier to just wait them out and pay a little bit than it would be to fight them.
list of applicable patents Microsoft is using (Score:5, Informative)
For anyone curious, these are the 4 patents that Microsoft has been wielding like a club. Note: I've shortened it to list the basic claims below. Microsoft claims are repetitive legalize and go on and on repeating the same drivel over and over. Notice they are saying that they hold sole claim to the concepts of scheduling meetings, sending and receiving messages on a cellular network, storing file names in a file system, and pressing buttons. It would be laughable if they weren't successfully litigating the crap out of the entire Android industry. It's the dying screams of a company that no longer matters that has stopped innovating and wants someone else's success for themselves. Very sad and pathetic really. The truth is they could sue Apple, IBM or anyone else that even manufactures PCs out of existence with these patents if they wanted, they're so broad and there's so much prior art it's not even funny. The fact that they courts are upholding them is scary.
U.S. Patent No. 6,370,566 on "generating meeting requests and group scheduling from a mobile device" On May 18, 2012, the ITC ordered a U.S. import ban against Motorola's Android-based devices that infringe this Microsoft patent.
Claims: The present invention includes a mobile device which provides the user with the ability to schedule a meeting request from the mobile device itself. The mobile device creates an object representative of the meeting request and assigns the object a global identification number which uniquely identifies the object to other devices which encounter the object. In this way, other devices which encounter the meeting request are capable of identifying it as a unique meeting request in order to alleviate the problem of duplicate meeting request transmissions. In accordance with another preferred feature of the present invention, an electronic mail application or calendar application on the mobile device obtains a fully qualified electronic mail address for the potential attendees from an abridged address book or directory stored on the mobile device itself. This alleviates problems associated with the storage capacity of the mobile device. In accordance with another preferred embodiment of the present invention, the mobile device creates the meeting object and the electronic mail meeting request object using a set of properties which are supported by a plurality of PIMs that may receive the objects. This provides compatibility with an increased number of devices which are likely to encounter the objects. In accordance with yet another preferred feature of the present invention, localizers implement a plurality of templates on the mobile device which are used in formatting the properties of the objects associated with the meeting request. A data stream representative of the meeting request is parsed by the mobile device and placed in pre-defined fields in the appropriate templates so that the text viewed by the user of the mobile device more closely conforms to local convention. In addition, time zone information is also included in one embodiment.
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EP1304891 on "communicating multi-part messages between cellular devices using a standardized interface" On May 24, 2012, the Munich I Regional Court granted Microsoft an injunction over this patent against Motorola's Android-based devices. This was the first Microsoft v. Google decision ever. It came down only days after Google completed its acquisition of Motorola Mobility. The ruling is already being enforced in Germany.
Claims: A method for facilitating an application sending multiple short messages fragments, the method for use in a cellular network that facilitates the transmission of messages between cellular computing devices, the messages being multi-part messages that consist of multiple short message fragments of limited size: [either compressed, encrypted or wrapped in XML.]
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EP0618540 on a "common name space for long and short filenames" On July 27, the Mannheim Regional Court granted Microsoft a German patent injunction against Go
Re:Gotta be kidding me (Score:3, Informative)
Actually these patent wars are leading to innovation: Samsung has an experimental fs called F2FS that is already in linux 3.8 which is specifically designed to replace FAT on flash storage. The next android version is pulling from 3.8 and I'm guessing at around 2013Q3 tizen will get released with it as well. Gparted already has beta support and I'm guessing a windows driver is just around the corner.
That is, unless Microsoft deliberately screw with the WHQL process...
Re:list of applicable patents Microsoft is using (Score:2, Informative)
"EP0618540 on a "common name space for long and short filenames" On July 27, the Mannheim Regional Court granted Microsoft a German patent injunction against Google's Motorola Mobility over this file system patent. It decided the infringement question in Microsoft's favor and did not find Google's invalidity arguments strong enough to order a stay."
This is used for the FAT32 filesystem, presumably. This patent dates from 1994. It's been 19 years. Thankfully it will finally expire in another year. I'll celebrate that day the same as the day the stupid LZW patents expired. There's too much prior art that is ignored and too many "obvious to those skilled in the art" patents.
Re:What Microsoft told them... (Score:4, Informative)
GPLv2 section 7:
Everyone who signs Microsoft's agreement and continues to use the Linux kernel is in violation of its license. As such, anyone who holds copyright on the code in the kernel could file suit.
The list of Bogus Microsoft patents (Score:4, Informative)
These are the list of frivolous, prior art ridden patents Microsoft used to try and extort money from Barnes and Noble. When the trial was about to go to court a magical partnership was established between Microsoft and Barnes & Noble and the lawsuit was dropped. It's a pity more companies don't stand up to these patent trolls.
Microsoft vs.Barnes and Noble
5778372
6339780
5889522
6891551
6957233
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5778372.html [freepatentsonline.com]
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6339780.html [freepatentsonline.com]
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5889522.html [freepatentsonline.com]
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6891551.html [freepatentsonline.com]
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6957233.html [freepatentsonline.com]
U.S. Patent No. 5778372 Remote retrieval and display management of electronic document with incorporated images. A browser remotely retrieves electronic documents from a remote computer network for viewing by a user. For enhancing responsiveness, the browser initially displays an electronic document without a background image so that the electronic document is initially displayed more quickly. The browser also prioritizes downloading of embedded images of the document by their incorporation in the currently visible portion of the electronic document. Further, the browser dynamically creates additional connections for retrieving resources incorporated into the electronic document from the remote computer network.
U.S. Patent No. 6339780 Loading status in a hypermedia browser having a limited available display area. Described herein is a portable computer having a limited display area. An Internet or other hypermedia browser executes on the portable computer to load and display content in a content viewing area. During times when the browser is loading content, the browser displays a temporary, animated graphic element over the content viewing area. The graphic element is removed after the content is loaded, allowing unobstructed viewing of the loaded content.
U.S. Patent No. 5889522 System Provided Child Window Controls. New varieties of child window controls are provided as system resources that application programs may exploit. The preferred embodiment of the present invention provides a dynamic link library (DLL) for implementing the new child window controls as part of an operating system. The new child window controls include a header bar control for providing header bars in application programs. The new controls also include a hot key control that allows a user to view and edit hot key combinations. The new controls further include a tab control for establishing tabs that differentiate amongst pages in user interfaces provided by application programs. An image list data type is defined and functions are provided for manipulating the image list data type. Image lists include multiple like-sized images that are stored efficiently in a single bitmap.
U.S. Patent No. 6891551 Selection Handles in Editing Electronic Documents. A computer system and method for highlighting and selecting elements of electronic documents is disclosed. In one embodiment, a selection area identifies an initial selection of data, and one or more selection handles appear on the selection area to allow dynamic resizing of the selection area to select a larger or smaller portion of data or number of items.
U.S. Patent No. 6957233 Method and Apparatus for Capturing and Rendering Annotations for Non-Modifiable Electronic Content. A system and method for capturing annotations for a non-modifiable document is disclosed. Once it is determined that an annotation is to be created, the system determines the file position of the selected object. The file position of the selected object is stored along with the created annotation in another file or a non-read only po
Re:list of applicable patents Microsoft is using (Score:4, Informative)
In 1998, the concept of scheduling meetings using your phone was not obvious at all.
These are bullshit patents following the long tradition of: "on a computer", to "on the Internet", to "on a mobile device". Yes, in 1998 shitty cell phones with small screens and limited inputs weren't used to schedule meetings. As the devices became more like general purpose computers scheduling meetings with them became common, duh.
Bill Gates on patents, circa 1991: "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. [..] In many application categories straighforward thinking ahead allows you to come up with patentable ideas."