Will the next big legal battle be Microsoft vs. Google regarding the search engine giant’s Android mobile operating system?
Microsoft on Tuesday signed a patent agreement with HTC that provides broad coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for Android-based HTC phones, but media reports suggest that Microsoft is now publicly asserting that Android infringes on Microsoft intellectual property.
Best online Microsoft MCTS Training, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com
This infringement applies to a variety of Android features, including the user interface and the underlying OS, according to CNet.
Microsoft acknowledged Wednesday that it has “concerns” about the Android platform, but stopped short of confirming that it would pursue legal action.
“Microsoft has a decades-long record of investment in software platforms. As a result, we have built a significant patent portfolio in this field, and we have a responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to ensure that competitors do not free ride on our innovations,” Horacio Gutierrez, deputy general counsel of intellectual property and licensing at Microsoft, said in a statement. “We have also consistently taken a proactive approach to licensing to resolve IP infringement by other companies, and have been talking with several device manufacturers to address our concerns relative to the Android mobile platform.”
A Google spokesman said the company is “not commenting at all at this point.”
We asked HTC, which has several Android-based phones, if it discussed this licensing deal with Google prior to the announcement, but the company said it was its policy “not to discuss the details of these agreements or the negotiations that go into making them.”
Last month, Apple sued HTC for patent infringement involving the iPhone’s hardware, underlying architecture, and interface. Microsoft’s Gutierrez wrote a blog post about the case on March 16, arguing against the notion that Apple’s suit will impede further smartphone development.
“There is a long history of IP litigation in the mobile phone market, and innovation has continued apace,” Gutierrez wrote. “The smartphone market is still in a nascent state; much innovation still lies ahead in this field. In all nascent technology markets, there is a period early where IP rights will be sorted out.”
Whether that sorting out period involves Google’s Android and Microsoft’s lawyers remains to be seen, but Gutierrez suggested that in the next few years, “we will see the patent royalties applicable to the smartphone software stack settle at a level that reflects the increasing importance software has as a portion of the overall value of the device.”
Gutierrez also said that the “primary driver for adoption and sales in [the mobile] market is the software on and available for the device” and that open source devices still require licensing deals.
“Smartphones are a product of the ‘open innovation’ paradigm – device manufacturers do not do all of their development in-house, but add their own innovations to those of others to create a product that users want,” Gutierrez wrote. “Open innovation is only possible through the licensing of third-party IP rights, which ensures that those who develop the building blocks that make a new technology possible are properly compensated for their investments in research and development. After all, technology just doesn’t appear, fully-developed, from Zeus’s head. It requires lots of hard work and resources to create.”
