4 ms·

Drunk On Licensing Fees And Patents, Microsoft Has Become A Joke

37 points by bound008 16y ago

lallysingh 16y ago
It's not all that different from when MS used to license OSs to vendors by the number of machines sold, total --- not the number that had windows on them. Parasites.
- mrkurt 16y ago
  Like ESPN licenses it's channels (and even ESPN3) based on the number of subscribers, not the people who actually tune into them?
  - beagle3 16y ago
    No, it would be more like Toshiba would have to pay to ESPN based on number of televisions sold.
  - rosser 16y ago
    If you're subscribed to a package that includes ESPN*, then ESPN gets its share of that subscription revenue. If you're not, they don't. The analog for MSFT's licensing practices would have ESPN getting a cut for every subscriber, whether or not their package included ESPN.
    - mrkurt 16y ago
      ESPN gets a cut for every Comcast internet subscriber, that's why I get to enjoy ESPN3 (their streaming service). They also tend to do things like mandate that ESPN be available in the lowest level cable packages. Have you ever had to pay extra to get ESPN? If you buy more than the local channels, ESPN comes along. It's obviously not exactly analogous, but volume licensing based on the number of consumers/seats/etc is pretty standard. We grant people a monopoly over their IP and it turns out they want to extract as much value as they can from it.
tzs 16y ago
Is it an industry requirement that in order to write about patents you have to not know anything about them? In particular, the author seems to not understand that a plaintiff claiming that their patent is being used by defendant to accomplish X does not mean plaintiff is claiming that their patent covers all possible ways to do X.
famousactress 16y ago
"How long until Microsoft is making more money on patent licensing than from their mobile unit? Serious question. Maybe they already are." I'd imagine there's an excellent chance that they already are. Sounds much cheaper to keep a stable of lawyers around than hundreds of engineers, testers, support staff, and marketing folk. If you think the margins on selling software are high...
- api 16y ago
  The latest trend in business: make money by creating no value whatsoever! Actually, in my experience this is the MBA ideal. From the pure bean-counting perspective, the ideal business would be something that just made free money. No staff, no overhead, etc.
acabal 16y ago
Siegler is surprised that MS is doing something greedy and underhanded? Is he even aware of MS's history from not even 10 years ago?
Laments 16y ago
Before we derail too hard on this article, I would like to take a moment to point out that there's an article ranked higher about how Apple's suing Amazon over the term "App Store"... not like they've sued Microsoft over the term, too. (Also on HN somewhere.) So, it's not just MS who sues -- but lest we forget, TC needs to be provocative and incite us to be persnickity. That's some high-quality bloggin'.

37 points by bound008 16y ago

It's not all that different from when MS used to license OSs to vendors by the number of machines sold, total --- not the number that had windows on them. Parasites.

mrkurt 16y ago
Like ESPN licenses it's channels (and even ESPN3) based on the number of subscribers, not the people who actually tune into them?
- beagle3 16y ago
  No, it would be more like Toshiba would have to pay to ESPN based on number of televisions sold.
- rosser 16y ago
  If you're subscribed to a package that includes ESPN*, then ESPN gets its share of that subscription revenue. If you're not, they don't. The analog for MSFT's licensing practices would have ESPN getting a cut for every subscriber, whether or not their package included ESPN.
  - mrkurt 16y ago
    ESPN gets a cut for every Comcast internet subscriber, that's why I get to enjoy ESPN3 (their streaming service). They also tend to do things like mandate that ESPN be available in the lowest level cable packages. Have you ever had to pay extra to get ESPN? If you buy more than the local channels, ESPN comes along. It's obviously not exactly analogous, but volume licensing based on the number of consumers/seats/etc is pretty standard. We grant people a monopoly over their IP and it turns out they want to extract as much value as they can from it.

tzs 16y ago

Is it an industry requirement that in order to write about patents you have to not know anything about them? In particular, the author seems to not understand that a plaintiff claiming that their patent is being used by defendant to accomplish X does not mean plaintiff is claiming that their patent covers all possible ways to do X.

famousactress 16y ago

"How long until Microsoft is making more money on patent licensing than from their mobile unit? Serious question. Maybe they already are." I'd imagine there's an excellent chance that they already are. Sounds much cheaper to keep a stable of lawyers around than hundreds of engineers, testers, support staff, and marketing folk. If you think the margins on selling software are high...

api 16y ago
The latest trend in business: make money by creating no value whatsoever! Actually, in my experience this is the MBA ideal. From the pure bean-counting perspective, the ideal business would be something that just made free money. No staff, no overhead, etc.

acabal 16y ago

Siegler is surprised that MS is doing something greedy and underhanded? Is he even aware of MS's history from not even 10 years ago?

Laments 16y ago

Before we derail too hard on this article, I would like to take a moment to point out that there's an article ranked higher about how Apple's suing Amazon over the term "App Store"... not like they've sued Microsoft over the term, too. (Also on HN somewhere.) So, it's not just MS who sues -- but lest we forget, TC needs to be provocative and incite us to be persnickity. That's some high-quality bloggin'.