Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Has Built a Patent Front Against Linux/Android

Patent stacking against free (libre and gratis) operating systems such as Android

Patent stooges



Summary: How Microsoft, Apple, and of course the Microsoft-led Nokia are now working together against the market leader, which is also a Linux success story, built upon Free/libre software

According to this month's update from the FRAND boosters, "the second phase of the Microsoft v. Motorola RAND breach of contract trial will take place in Judge James L. Robart’s courtroom in Seattle, WA. A jury will decide whether Motorola breached its SSO-related RAND licensing obligations by offering what Microsoft deems “blatantly unreasonable” licensing terms for its 802.11- and H.264-essential patents, and then following up with patent infringement suits."



This is not the whole story. What this whole Motorola case is about should be recalled. Microsoft sued Motorola after it had failed to get payments for Android. Motorola then sued back and Microsoft took litigation to its back yard, adding litigation aimed at Google. Motorola was partly bought by Google in the interim. Now, according to this update from Pamela Jones, there are yet more filings.

There are a couple of filings in the Seattle Microsoft v. Motorola case to tell you about.


What we generally find in this case is Apple and Microsoft liaising in patent litigation against Google. They try to tax Android and they openly collaborate on it. If anyone should be sued for copying, it is Apple and Microsoft, not Google. As Groklaw recalls, equipped with this link from last month:

We should expect no less from Apple; after all, Steve Jobs said that good artists copy, great artists steal. Apple's genius isn't in inventing entirely new technologies. It's in taking existing technologies and polishing, commercializing, and mainstreaming them.

[...]

Animated wallpapers? Android. Universal multitasking? Android again. The multitasking interface? I'm not the only one who thinks that looks like WebOS. Android has auto-updated apps for years. Car integration is one of BlackBerry's last great strongholds. iTunes Radio is like Pandora with sales links. I could go on and on.


Apple is sidling with Microsoft, even on search now (the duopoly is aligned against Google). It should be clear that the evidence of collaboration between those two companies is very compelling and strong now. They even appear in their court cases in conjunction.

Apple finds it to be a convenient relationship. Microsoft also recruited Nokia with its massive patent portfolio for this. Having just passed some patents to MOSAID and (one of several such trolls), then expanded this armament of patents, Nokia -- like Yahoo -- is waiting to receive orders from Microsoft. Here is a long rant about what happened inside Nokia:

Sherlock Holmes and the Hounds of the Basket Case: Clues on the trail of Elop, Ballmer and Nokia's Board



[...]

Elop is the worst CEO of all time, he has personally caused the biggest corporate downfall in the Global Fortune 500 history, after we eliminate management fraud and crimes. For management incompetence Elop is the benchmark. The worst CEO ever. We need not review all his damage, growing smartphone sales turned into history's fastest collapse. Growing profitable handset business turned into fastest losses ever in this industry. Market share collapse - Nokia was twice as large in market share as the iPhone, four times as big as Samsung's smartphones when Elop started - and grew more in 2010 than either rival - but now Nokia smartphones (on all of its platforms, combined) is one sixth the size of the iPhone and one tenth the size of Samsung's smartphones. Nokia share price, Nokia brand value, Nokia loyalty, all destroyed in the past 2 years and four months.

[...]

So with that perspective, that this ship was sinking so badly, no way would any sane Microsoft CEO want to buy it. Not from what it had been to what had been done to it. But now, lets turn to Elop. Elop clearly had pitched the idea to the Nokia Board, that Microsoft would like to buy Nokia. Elop knew Microsoft, Elop knew Ballmer, and Elop could privately talk with Ballmer back home in Seattle, where nobody would even know. As we have since heard, for example, in the summer of 2011, Ballmer and Elop conspired to consider buying RIM ie Blackberry, but decided against it. So they've been cooking up these plans for a while.

We do not know exactly when it is that the idea was first brought to the Nokia Board (or it might be out there, if someone has seen news reporting on it, please share in the comments and I'll update the story). We do know that Elop made a long series of decisions and announcements that were seen as 'stupid' and often caused severe drops to Nokia share prices (or stopped the growth of Nokia share price, like with the unveiling of the N9 running MeeGo). Why would an idiot CEO want to stop growth of the share price and actually wish for a decline in the share price? If he had some personal play in the share - illegal obviously, insider trading and manipulating the stock price. Or if he wanted to make Nokia more appealing to a buyer - to Microsoft.

So. Lets examine some of Elop's decisions now with the prism of 'would this be in the interests of making Nokia more appealing to Microsoft in an acquisition'.

And the picture becomes very clear. Why call Nokia's own products bad, when in fact they were not. When in fact they were award-winning, market-dominating and where even Apple would only weeks later agree to pay Nokia in royalties for Nokia patents, not the other way around. Why the Burning Platforms memo? To cause a severe drop in Nokia sales, retail sales support, carrier support, Nokia brand and - Nokia share price? That cannot be in the best interests of Nokia owners (shareholders) or Nokia employees or Nokia partners or suppliers, or Nokia retail channel and carriers, and end-users. Any CEO to release that memo would be a madman - but what if its his intention to make Nokia more appealing to be bought by Microsoft? It did help cause a severe drop in Nokia share price. Together with the stupid announcement of the Windows shift and end of Symbian with no phones to sell - helped push Nokia share price to under half what it had been in less than half a year. A big achievement, if the objective is to get Nokia ready to be sold to Microsoft?


"Here is more about Nokia's rating," wrote a person from Finland, pointing to these articles [1, 2] about Nokia reaffirming its "junk" status. Nokia is selling patents to trolls Microsoft asks Nokia to sell them to. The target is Android, Microsoft is just forming a patent front against Google and Linux. People oughtn't lose sight of which company originally commissioned this cartel.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Always Check Your Inputs
Garbage in, garbage out. Or wrong assumptions, wrong corollary.
 
Links 10/07/2025: Linda Yaccarino Divorces MElonazi Site, Wildfires Hit Syria
Links for the day
The History and the Policy of the EPO's Stance on Breastfeeding (Corporate Monopolies Versus Babies' Health)
"The Case for Introducing a Breastfeeding Policy at the EPO"
Gemini Links 10/07/2025: Inventing Chords and "Nightmare Boss"
Links for the day
Igor Ljubuncic Once Again Shows That for Technical Reasons Wayland Still Sucks, Performs Considerably Worse Than What Existed for Decades
That is aside from compatibility factors and other crucial factors
Links 10/07/2025: "Apple Vs The Law" and Twitter Became Full Nazi Bar
Links for the day
Unable to Find Anyone to Work as Their Media Lawyer, Brett Wilson LLP Will Continue Losing Female Staff
What sort of sick person would wish to join Brett Wilson LLP to carry this baton?
Microsoft-Sponsored Propaganda Site Has Removed False 'Hit Piece' About Dr. Stallman (With Fake and Misrepresented Imagery) But Only After 4 Years
So they only removed that page some time around 2025, i.e. about 4 years after it had been published
Dan Neidle Said That Tax Evasion Facilitator Mr Zahawi (Working to Silence Bloggers Through Brett Wilson LLP) Targeted Not Only Him (But The Others Kept Quiet)
"Mr Neidle said after repelling Mr Zahawi he was contacted by bloggers and tweeters who had received similar threats. They deleted their work “and in most cases never commented publicly on anything again”."
SLAPP Funding Transparency Urgently Needed in the UK and Elsewhere (in Practice, Not Just in Theory)
Writing about crime - including Microsoft crime - is not a crime
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 09, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 09, 2025
Elodie Bergot Still Doing Illegal Things at the EPO, Based on the Local Staff Committee Munich
They keep taking away from the staff while compelling the staff to do illegal things
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: Extreme Testing and Golang Documentation in Geminispace
Links for the day
Vice President of the European Patent Office (EPO) Complains That Techrights Gives Visibility to Legal and Technical Issues at the EPO
"Follow-up on enquiries relating to Dir. 1218 and 1001"
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com and Various Slopfarms That Lie About "Linux" and Are Promoted by Google News
Google does not seem interested in tackling this problem
Links 09/07/2025: War Updates and Microsoft Moving to India to Cut Costs
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Was Always a 'Movement' of Inclusion of Tolerance
Even the licences themselves remove access barriers
Links 09/07/2025: "Subprime AI Crisis" and "OpenAI May Be in Major Trouble Financially"
Links for the day
Huge Piles of Legal Papers ('Paper DDoS') Do Not Impress Judges and Regulators
they just make judges and regulators even more suspicious of the eagerness to resort to 'paper DDoS'
Brett Wilson LLP Sent Over 5 Kilograms (or Over 12 Pounds) of Legal Papers! Because Writing About Microsoft Abuses is 'Illegal'.
How do you guys sleep at night? On a big pile of Microsoft money?
Extremism as a Weapon Against GNU/Linux (Microsoft Lunduke)
He ought to know the Halloween Documents. Wasn't he a Microsoft employee when these came out?
Lunduke Isn't Even Hiding His Anti-Linux Agenda (From "Linux Sucks" to "Linux is Pedophiles")
just trying to make a lot of trouble
Some People Use Computers to Get Actual Work Done
Tolerance and inclusion must extend to acceptance that some people don't agree with you, might never agree with you, and imposing what allegedly works for you on them is unreasonable
Example of "Old" Things That Still Work
The notion that something being "old" implies it must be discarded is typically advanced by those looking to sell more of something
Some Scheduled Maintenance Later Today
Typically the most vulnerable service during short interruptions is IRC
Computers Are Just a Tool
People don't get married because they love weddings, folks don't join the army because they love war, and most drivers don't drive to work because they love cars
Apple Way Past Its Prime
Apple deserves a decline
The FSF's SysOps Team Recovered From Serious Hardware Issue Within Hours
About half a day ago I noticed that all/most GNU/FSF sites were not reachable and thus reached out to a contact for any details
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 08, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 08, 2025
Slopwatch: Turning Bugs Into FUD About "Linux", Getting Basic Facts Wrong
all the screenshots are of fake articles; we don't want to link to any
Technical Reasons, Not Politics: With Wayland "it feels a lot like Linux from 20-25 years ago, which is horrendously frustrating, because it feels like we wasted one or two decades of progress and stability"
Lately, quite a few benchmarks were published to show Wayland compares poorly compared to what we had
PCLinuxOS Recovering From Fire
It looks like a nightmare scenario, where even backups onsite get destroyed
Links 09/07/2025: More Heatwaves, Officials Culled in Russia
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: XScreensaver and Resurrection
Links for the day
Links 08/07/2025: "Cyberattack Deals Blow to Russian Firmware" and "Cash Remains King"
Links for the day
FSF40 T-shirt message
by Alex Oliva
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Creativity, Gotify with NUT Server, and Sudo Bugs
Links for the day
More on "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
"pepe the frogs"
Links 08/07/2025: Sabotage of Networking Infrastructure, Microsoft XBox Game Pass Deemed “Unsustainable”
Links for the day
Dalai Lama Succession as Evidence That Determined, Motivated People Can Reach Their Nineties
And we need to quit talking about their death all the time
Many Lawyers (for Microsoft) and 1,316 Pages to Pick on a Litigant in Person Who Exposed Serious Microsoft Abuses
Answers must be given
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Ancillary Justice and Small Web July
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 07, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 07, 2025