HTC licenses Microsoft patents for its Android phones

Google claims that Android rivals are using ‘bogus patents’ to attack the mobile OS, but Microsoft offers up evidence to suggest that Google dealt itself out of patent discussions.

Filed under: Microsoft, MobileIn a continuing, drawn-out, and rather banal storyline that's reminiscent of a cheap daytime soap, Microsoft has sued Motorola for infringing nine patents in its Android phones.

Microsoft and HTC have signed a patent agreement protecting the handset maker from Microsoft patent lawsuits over its industry-leading Android smartphones. HTC will have to pay royalties to Microsoft, which for the first time is enforcing its alleged Linux-related patents on an Android-based product, but the agreement could help it defend against a lawsuit from Apple....

Patent Wars: The fight to enforce and invalidate patents has reached a new level with Google accusing others of waging “bogus patents” against Android’s very existence, even though some of those patents were the ones Google was trying to buy!

Photo by Joi Ito

Summary: With engineers back at the helm’s top positions, Google steps further away from software patents and joins Red Hat’s opposition to them BACK when Google started defending Android from SCOracle, it did throw some hints that it would oppose software patents. Groklaw covered it thoroughly at the time.

Summary: Microsoft’s new direction continues to include “enforcement” (as in aggression) with software patents and Finjan, which Microsoft partly owns, is just attacking companies with software patents because it’s failing as a real business MICROSOFT is having real problems which we wrote about this morning [1, 2, 3].

Boy, this legal stuff can get confusing. Let’s take it from the beginning and walk through it.

Summary: The mobile arena is being distorted by Microsoft and some allies who use software patent to increase the cost of phones (including Linux phones); they are using patents on software also to scare manufacturers, giving them the impression that Linux is not free BACK we go to talking about the mobbyists, who sometimes express love for Mono and almost always seem to promote software patent

Summary: Together with new partners like Nokia, Microsoft is trying to ensure that Internet video and the smartphones market are as toxic as possible for Linux A FEW days ago we wrote about Microsoft banning open source licences.