Welcome back, Groklaw.

Story: Barnes & Noble Exposes Microsoft's Trivial Patents and Strategy Against AndroidTotal Replies: 14
Author Content
jacog

Nov 16, 2011
6:09 AM EDT
And the B&N thing makes for much more fun reading than the SCO stuff.
henke54

Nov 16, 2011
8:19 AM EDT
Quoting:On information and belief, the license fees demanded by Microsoft are higher than what Microsoft charges for a license to its entire operating system designed for mobile devices, Windows Phone 7.
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/telecommunications/barne...

M$-bed-fellow Enderle is 'also back' : http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/enderle/litigation-wa...
jacog

Nov 16, 2011
8:25 AM EDT
I guess with a movie sequel it's always good to bring back some recurring characters. :)
gus3

Nov 16, 2011
8:56 AM EDT
@jacog: A bookstore is more fun to work in than a Microsoft lackey's office.
helios

Nov 16, 2011
10:22 AM EDT
Couple of things.....

Of pots and kettles, I found this statement humorous coming from Enderle:

"Much like reading just Fox News or MSNBC on U.S. politics, reading one or the other will present a disjointed view of the facts as seen by one side."

Enderle is the king of disjointed views, and i suspect being on the MS payroll in one form or another will distort one's view, especially when all they have to do is simply write on their behalf. I missed Rob and his obvious allegiance. Welcome back to the show Rob.

When I attended high school, there was an often-bloody war that raged between longhairs (hippies if you will) and the cowboy crowd. Most generally, the hippies kept to themselves and went about their hippie business, not bothering anyone. They were often beaten badly when caught alone in the bathrooms or in other isolated spaces...it seemed like the popular redneck sport for this time period in late 60's Arizona.

David Hammond was a tall, skinny kid who kept to himself, played guitar in a decent band and tended to be more shy than anything else. One Friday, he was cornered by Randy Fox and a couple of his beer-swilling buddies and was pushed into meeting him behind the school for his first official a$$ kicking.

This unassuming, shy hippie beat the living cr@p out of the guy. I mean, broken jaw, nose and a crushed orbit. Suddenly he was the hippie hero on campus. This quiet, unpretentious guy stepped up and with a few blows from his fists, turned the tables on the tailgate Budweiser swilling bunch.

I see a lot of Dave Hammond in B&N. As I was in attendance to watch this epic brawl in The Age of Aquarius, I will be ringside in February to watch this much larger battle take place.

I am guessing that at least some of the bullying will cease after B&N takes care of business. Probably not, but there now seems to be a good chance of it. It might even quiet Enderle and the MS cheering section.

Yeah, right...
henke54

Nov 16, 2011
11:10 AM EDT
It's beginning 'to leak in' at the 'common news-guys' :

http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2011/11/16/bar...

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/11/14/antitrust-patent-worlds-...

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/79179
tracyanne

Nov 16, 2011
5:04 PM EDT
He is right about one thing. While B&N are fighting Microsoft, in the courts or "the court of Public Opinion" they cannot fully concentrte on their core business.

I guess it's a choice they made, and one that I hope pays off.
gus3

Nov 16, 2011
6:05 PM EDT
Microsoft has already lost in the CoPO. Think about it: what regular "dude/dudette on the street" thinks Windows is all that and a bag of chips?

None of them.

Windows has a severe image problem, one of Microsoft's own making. The only cheerleaders Windows has, are either Microsoft employees, or paid shills. I'm still trying to erase that execrable Jerry Seinfeld commercial from my memory. The following release cycle was just as creepy, but with anonymous Stepford wives instead.

Throw in some of their infamous "men in black" intimidating Asus exhibitors, the presently-discussed Android lawsuits, the connection to the failed SCO lawsuits, and even Microsoft stockholders questioning the need for US$52 billion in warchest^Wliquid assets, and I conclude that the dirty tactics are now common knowledge, even if only on a subconscious level.

That's a lot of damage done. It's up to the rest of us to capitalize on it. This action from B&N is a fantastic start: take all the data points, connect the dots, and show the clear picture.
jsusanka

Nov 16, 2011
7:45 PM EDT
That whole hp WebOS announcement doesn't pass the sniff test. They drop WebOS and announce windows 8 on tablets that isn't even out yet. Sounds like the 90's all over again and microsoft announcing vapor ware.

I think they should bring HP into this and find out why they dropped WebOS like they did and announced windows 8.

Something there just doesn't pass the sniff test.

One other thing is I don't understand is how apple got all their patents when the WebOS and palm was already doing a lot of those things that their patents describe.

I am so tired of hearing how Steve Jobs was such a genius and his word is golden. Apple didn't invent that much and I think we would be light years ahead of where we are technology wise if it wasn't for Apple and Microsoft. I think they both held the technology world back for years and continue to do so.
BernardSwiss

Nov 16, 2011
8:30 PM EDT
Interesting links, henke54.

I also found this one, from a photography supplies company, explaining why they were withdrawing a successful product from the market.

http://www.luma-labs.com/blogs/news/4540122-an-open-letter-t...

It outlines how even in the realm of physical patents, an utterly trivial and obvious, totally bogus patent, with readily-found prior art, can be acquired and wielded against competitors, and how those competitors can come to the conclusion that they can't afford to fight such blatant abuse, simply because they couldn't even afford it even if they were to win.

BernardSwiss

Nov 16, 2011
8:47 PM EDT
And there's a similar story posted on LXer today, which has finally concluded (though it's a GPL/copyright case, instead of a patents story).

GPL upheld in Berlin case http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/158292/index.html

I had forgotten about this one, and if anyone had mentioned it, would have assumed it was settled long since. by now.
henke54

Nov 17, 2011
5:55 AM EDT
Alison Frankel wrote:The big guns are rolling out on both sides of Microsoft's patent infringement suit against Barnes [he] Noble at the U.S. International Trade Commission. Microsoft has no fewer than four firms (Sidley Austin[/he] Orrick, Herrington [he] Sutcliffe[/he] Woodcock Washburn; and Adduci, Mastriani and Schaumberg) working on the six-month-old case, in which it accuses Barnes [he] Noble's Nook e-readers of infringing Microsoft patents. Barnes & Noble this week supplemented its team of Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Kenyon & Kenyon with Paul Brinkman's group from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. The Quinn addition is notable because Barnes & Noble's devices use Google's Android operating system[/he] Quinn, which is one of Google's go-to IP firms, previously defended the Android system in Apple's ITC case against HTC.

When it comes to Android, Microsoft and Google don't exactly think the same way, as you'll see below. But there is one issue on which they have a peculiar alignment of interests: They're both trying to put the kibosh on supposedly confidential information that's jumped from litigation into the public domain.

Google, as you'll no doubt recall, has been fighting for months to undo the damage an email written by one of its Android engineers has apparently caused to Google's defense of Oracle's Java infringement claims. (The engineer, Tim Lindholm, said all alternatives to Java "suck" and Google should license the software code.) Google has been arguing, without any success, that Oracle improperly introduced the damning email into the record and all traces of it should be purged -- even though, by now, Lindholm's email is plastered all over the Internet.

Microsoft, meanwhile, has been gleefully roasted this week by tech bloggers citing disclosures from the Barnes & Noble case. (See, for instance, here, here, and here.) The Microsoft-is-a-troll taunting began way back in April, when the brainy folks at Groklaw first covered Barnes & Noble's answer and affirmative defenses to Microsoft's ITC complaint. The book-selling giant, Groklaw pointed out, was asserting a patent misuse defense, claiming that Microsoft is on a mission to destroy Android by demanding exorbitant licensing fees for trivial patents.

Then last week, Bloomberg noticed that Barnes & Noble had filed some pretty juicy documents to support its assertions, including a March 2011 letter Barnes & Noble's Cravath lawyers sent to the Justice Department's antitrust division, urging DOJ to investigate Microsoft for antitrust violations in its anti-Android campaign. In an accompanying slideshow presentation to the DOJ, Barnes & Noble detailed Microsoft's Android-related license deals and the nondisclosure agreements Microsoft supposedly forced licensees to sign. Groklaw uploaded all the documents -- including Cravath's letter to the DOJ and the slideshow -- and the blogosphere took over. (Kinda funny that the March 2011 letter from Cravath is addressed to then-Antitrust Division chief Christine Varney, who is now, of course, a Cravath partner.)

You can find the Barnes [he] Noble filings with a few clicks, but you can't find them in the record of the ITC case anymore. That's because Microsoft complained to ITC Secretary James Holbein that the B&N document dump contained confidential information. (I can't even link to Microsoft's Nov. 2 and Nov. 4 letters[/he] they were filed under seal.)

Barnes [he] Noble, which has made Microsoft's secrecy a theme of its defense, responded with a fiery six-page letter on Nov. 4. "Prior to the institution of this investigation and ever since, Microsoft has claimed confidentiality where none existed," B&N's lawyers at Kenyon & Kenyon wrote. "Over the course of license negotiations with Microsoft, Barnes & Noble repeatedly told Microsoft that it did not consider its negotiations to be confidential[/he] Microsoft's unilateral insistence on the confidentiality of documents given to Barnes & Noble over the course of negotiations does not create a confidentiality agreement." (I highly recommend reading the letter, which details exactly how Microsoft attempted to extract a nondisclosure agreement from Barnes & Noble in a series of licensing meetings.)

Barnes & Noble said in the Nov. 4 letter that it would move to have the documents reclassified as not confidential, but the ITC docket doesn't indicate it's made a motion yet.

I left a message for Barnes & Noble counsel Peter Barbur of Cravath (who signed the DOJ letter) but didn't hear back. Paul Brinkman of Quinn declined comment. Microsoft counsel Robert Rosenthal of Orrick referred my call to a Microsoft spokesperson, who declined comment.

(Reporting by Alison Frankel)

Follow Alison on Twitter: @AlisonFrankel

Follow us on Twitter: @ReutersLegal
http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/2011/11_...
henke54

Nov 21, 2011
12:19 PM EDT
Barnes & Noble Lawyers Up Some More, Finds More Prior Art, and Seeks Letter Rogatory Re MOSAID ~ pj : http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20111116222255905
BernardSwiss

Nov 21, 2011
6:00 PM EDT
I am soooo tempted to get myself a Nook for Xmass -- just on principle.
mrider

Nov 21, 2011
6:30 PM EDT
@BernardSwiss:

Ditto. Further, I'm tempted to write on the warranty card something along the lines of:

"I purchased this specifically because you are willing to stand up to Microsoft."

Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]

Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!