Over the past few days, Microsoft managed to get two other manufacturers to sign on the dotted line for their Android patent-licensing agreement. After twisting some arms and dangling some carrots to get HTC, Acer, U.S. defense contractor General Dynamics Itronix, Onkyo, Velocity Micro, ViewSonic, Wistron, and Samsung to agree to pay licensing fees to them, Microsoft now has added LG (confirmed) and Pantech (very likely) to that list. With that, Microsoft is now drawing royalty from 70% of the smartphones sold in US.
That leaves only Motorola as the only major manufacturer in the US that has not submit to Microsoft. In a report published on 20th Dec 2011, Motorola was found to infringe on one out of seven patent infringement filed against Motorola. For that particular patent, Motorola was found to have infringed on four claims relating to US patent 6,370,566 which covers "generating meeting requests and group scheduling from a mobile device", filed in 1998 and granted in 2002.
While some may view that as a victory for Microsoft, we are leaning towards viewing that decision as a victory for Motorola instead. Clearly, fending and challenging one patent infringement is much better than trying to defend against seven different patent infringement in court. As all of us know by now, the details of each patent is ambiguous and very much subject to individual interpretation. It remains to be seen whether Motorola will be successful in its appeal on Patent 6,370,566.
Perhaps in a sign of things to come, Motorola has notched a win against Apple when ITC ruled that Motorola does not infringe on three patents that Apple has sued them with back in October 2010. Will it be Microsoft next?
With all due honesty, Microsoft has all the rights to be in a feisty mood after getting LG and Pantech to sign on the Android licensing agreement. However, what is hard to swallow is the fact that Microsoft has not even come up with a worthy challenger to Android but yet is able to actively milk profit out of it. Call it whatever you want but it certainly looks like some company is riding high on someone else's wave. The frustrating part? There is nothing most of us can do about it.
