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Microsoft to Google: Please Don’t Use Patents to Kill Video on the Web
- gvb 15y agoFor a $1,000 laptop, Motorola is demanding that Microsoft pay a royalty of $22.50. That is 2.25%. According to reports, that is roughly the royalty percentage Microsoft is getting from Android phone sellers ($5 to $15 per phone $15/$500 = 3%). http://www.mobiledia.com/news/107165.html http://www.mobiledia.com/news/107165.html
- kstenerud 15y agoAlso note the author of the OP article: Posted by Dave Heiner Vice President & Deputy General Counsel, Corporate Standards & Antitrust Group, Microsoft
- shrikant 15y agoLinked within that page is also this: http://www.mobiledia.com/news/104161.html http://www.mobiledia.com/news/104161.html Microsoft Wants to Ban Motorola Phones in U.S. "Motorola is infringing our patents and we are confident that the ITC will rule in our favor," said David Howard, Microsoft's deputy general counsel for litigation. "We are vigorously defending ourselves against Microsoft's patent attack business strategy," said Motorola in a responding statement. "We have also brought legal actions of our own in the U.S. and in Europe to address Microsoft's large scale of infringement of Motorola Mobility's patents." He who lives by the sword...
- nextparadigms 15y agoI didn't even know that. So they wanted to ban Motorola's products from US, and they complain about Motorola wanting to "only" charge them a little too much? Wow. If I were them I'd be thankful Motorola didn't adopt their own tactic.
- mbrubeck 15y agoMotorola and Microsoft are using the same tactics. Both are trying to get injunctions against alleged infringing products: "In legal proceedings on both sides of the Atlantic, Motorola is demanding that Microsoft take its products off the market, or else remove their standards-based ability to play video and connect wirelessly." This is a standard move in these patent battles; the same thing happened in the various Apple/Samsung/etc. cases of the past year. I presume the threat of lost sales is meant to motivate the other party to settle quickly (i.e., pay up!).
- zmmmmm 15y agoIndeed. It makes me wonder if this is exactly the outcome Motorola wants - a precedent set that indicates a "reasonable" value for tiny incremental features on a device. Then they can turn around and present that as evidence that Microsoft's demands on Android phones are wholly unreasonable when MS tries to ask Motorola for roylaties on Android.
- naner 15y agoMicrosoft has used patents in an anti-competitive manner for years and have lobbied in favor of software patent laws. As you sow, so shall you reap.
- Zirro 15y agoI was confused until I read: "For a $1,000 laptop, Motorola is demanding that Microsoft pay a royalty of $22.50 for its 50 patents on the video standard, called H.264." Google (and thus Motorola) wants to increase the use of WebM (instead of H.264) on the web. I see this as a positive thing, even though I am not sure how to feel about the methods used here. Still the message to Microsoft is clear: Implement WebM so that we can have the same, open-source format across the Internet. Killing H.264 is not the same as killing video on the web.
- kevingadd 15y agoKilling H264 is shortsighted and destructive since at present, there's no way Apple is ever going to drop H264 for WebM. All it accomplishes is fragmenting the web further and hurting end-users.
- vibrunazo 15y agoWhy wouldn't Apple adopt Webm?
- othermaciej 15y agoPerhaps this very Microsoft blog post gives some insight into why an organization might hesitate to use a technology covered by Google-owned patents. (Google has promised to continue Motorola's policies on standards-essential patents, i.e., they will use them as a weapon.)
- mikeryan 15y agoFirst its an inferior codec (particularly when compared to h.264 main or high profile) Second its unclear if WebM is patent encumbered or not. AFAIK its not yet been tested but if this current battle heats up its likely to come under fire fast. Third you now have literally millions of mobile devices and other CE devices with built in H.264 hardware video decoders very few with built in WebM. A lot of folks haven't cared that H.264 is patent encumbered, they pay the licensing fees and go on their way with a very tried and true codec. Until now...
- MCompeau 15y agoIf I recall Microsoft is using its patents to collect fees from Android licensees, yet here they are trying to make an appeal to the hacker ethos that Google is being anti-competitive. Sounds like they are trying to have things both ways and manipulate us in the process, we shouldn't stand for it.
- nextparadigms 15y agoWhen Google accused them of being patent bullies, Microsoft called Google crybabies. So who's the crybaby now? Not to mention that they are still bullying every single Android manufacturer out there to give them money on a product they didn't make. So, Microsoft, you probably heard this a few years ago, too, but: Please don't use patents to kill an open source OS.
- joebadmo 15y agoWhat I don't understand about this is what they really hope to accomplish. It seems to me that the Venn diagram of people who will see this and people who will see it for the blatant hypocrisy and obvious political/PR maneuvering it is has almost complete overlap. Right?
- reader5000 15y agoWell I enjoyed reading it for the good laugh.
- wmf 15y agoMotorola doesn't care what you think. They care about not getting nuked by Apple and Microsoft.
- redthrowaway 15y agoWhat does this have to do with Motorola? The discussion is about MS's hypocrisy, not Google/Motorola's.
- othermaciej 15y agoWhatever you may think of licensing software patents in general, I hope we can agree that promising to license a standards-essential patent on FRAND terms during a standards process, and then reneging, is considerably worse. I work a lot with standards groups, and I don't think the process could work very well if just any company could add their patented IP to the standard and then sue competitors for injunctive relief based on it. That would be destroying one of the few safe spaces in the patent landscape.
- joedev 15y agoHey, at least they said "Please".
- bradleyjg 15y agoLive by the sword, die by the sword.
- CountSessine 15y agoWhat Googlerola is doing here really isn't all that far off from what Rambus did a few years back with JEDEC. That was a good time and a half.
- forrestthewoods 15y agoWow, way more Microsoft hate here than I expected. We likely all agree on how terrible software patents are. However there is a difference between patents. Microsoft's request for FRAND pricing on patents related to mutually created industry standard protocols does not seem unreasonable to me.
- azakai 15y agoI'm curious, why? The patents Microsoft is suing others over (for example, B&N) are all very general and necessary to implement a modern OS. Just comparing the patents to the ones Microsoft is crying foul over here, both sets of patents seem about the same - general, of dubious quality, but necessary to implement a modern OS. The fact that some of those patents happened to have a committee around them earlier (and some deals in the committee regarding future use of the patents), is a quirk of history. In all fairness, all of these patents should be licensed under FRAND terms (or better) today, or none.
- tzs 15y agoThe difference is that with one set of patents, the owner of the patents asked for them to be included in standards, and promised to license then on fair and reasonable terms to anyone who wished to implement the standards. That did not happen with the other set.
- azakai 15y agoBut regardless of that promise, both sets of patents are necessary today to implement modern OSes. Why should one of them be usable to extort huge sums and the other not?
- fpgeek 15y agoWith the other set, the owner of the patents is a convicted monopolist who used their monopoly power to create de facto standards that depended on their dubious patents. I think it is understandable why some people might be more angry about that.
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- nmridul 15y agoWhy is HN that is against patents in general now seems supportive of Motorola ? Am I missing something or is this patent supposed to be the "good" patent ?
- AutoCorrect 15y agowe're supportive in watching MS get what it's dishing out.
- iterationx 15y agoKill video on the web. Maybe then the artifice of software patents will come tumbling down.