SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
For more than three years now, Microsoft has held to the line that it has loads of patents that are infringed by Google's Android operating system. "Licensing is the solution," wrote the company's head IP honcho in 2011, explaining Microsoft's decision to sue Barnes & Noble's Android-powered Nook reader.
Microsoft has revealed a few of those patents since as it has unleashed litigation against Android device makers. But for the most part, they've remained secret. That's led to a kind of parlor game where industry observers have speculated about what patents Microsoft might be holding over Android.
That long guessing game is now over. A list of hundreds of patents that Microsoft believes entitle it to royalties over Android phones, and perhaps smartphones in general, has been published on a Chinese language website.
More details are in the story, but too much to include in this summary.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Bot on Tuesday June 17 2014, @06:28AM
You are confusing propaganda with reality. Reality is that the software patent system is meant to reduce the world of computer systems, in which a novel product can potentially become market leader in a couple of years, to the old school world of territories, where the bigger one and the earlier one have advantages no matter what, where the strategies that MBAs learn in school are applicable.
In general, every time the system produces giants, those giants work to modify the system's rules so that their activity becomes essential/protected by law and not by choice.
Account abandoned.