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Unsurprisingly, thanks to this deal, the patent dispute has been settled. Here I was thinking that B&N would be the company which finally ended Microsoft's ludi

• nextparadigms 14y ago
  Now that you mentioned it, maybe Microsoft was afraid not only of losing a few hundred million dollars to B&N (which they ended up paying anyway in this investment, on top of what the digital division of B&N was worth), but that they will further invalidate more of what they thought were their "important" patents that they are using to get money from other companies. Was it Motorola or B&N that invalidated 6 out of 7 of their patents? I think both managed to invalidate quite a few. If only the other companies would grow a pair, too. Who knows, maybe Microsoft will end up investing in them, too, just like with B&N.
  • ZeroGravitas 14y ago
    This is the only explanation of this that makes sense to me. I love how they slip the standard "royalty-bearing licence" text into an agreement when they're giving a company widely regarded as struggling nearly 0.3 bilion dollars. I assume the only reason the other firms aren't revolting over this is that they already secretly negotiated better deals which led to their agreements, again with the publicity highlighting the "royalty payments to Microsoft" and nothing else about the deals.