Motorola Refused Ban For Windows, Xbox 360

[Gundam288]

[citation][nom]SAL-e[/nom]As far I know all patents are own by Motorola Mobility (now owned by Google). h.264 is very complex standard and is covered by 100+ patents own by many companies including Microsoft. Microsoft is member of MPEG (technical) group and Motorola as well that proposed the h.264 standard. There is other group MPEG LA. It is patent pool that license the patents that cover h.264. Microsoft is member of this group and also buys license from them. How the royalty are split between the members remains secret. Motorola didn't join MPEG LA and several other companies refused to join the patent pool. In this case implementers of h.264 should negotiate patent deal in private with Motorola (now Motorola Mobility whole subsidiary of Google). Until now Motorola Mobility didn't sue anyone for implementing h.264. The only reason why MS was sued is because MS sued Motorola Mobility over Android. Motorola won in Germany, but MS is trying to delay the fall back from German court decision. They come up with new legal theory and now they trying to prove it. Apple had similar case in Wisconsin, but their case got dismissed. Basically it is chess game between big boys. At the end they will split the spoils of the patent game and you the consumer will pay the bill.[/citation]
I'm not so sure about that as it was Mobility that was spun off, not the other way around. And Mobility was Phones while Solutions was radios and gov.. Solutions is seen as Motorola as they still use the old Motorola Corp. HQ as their own Corp HQ. I would imagne that all pattens just relating to phones went with mobility to some extent, but when it comes to this pattent I have no idea as Motorola Solutions makes a smartphone as well, the LEX 700.

http://www.motorola.com/Business/US-EN/Business+Product+and+Services/Public+Safety+LTE/LEX700

Granted this phone is mainly aimmed at Gov., but I'm not sure what h.264 covers, let alone how it was divided during the splitting of Motorola's phone division (Mobility) and if solutions still retains rights on it as well or not. That is a key point in which the artical lacks.

 

[falchard]

Topic title should read "Judge has common sense in patent ruling."

I mean seriously, barring the sale of a multi-million line software because of infringing software that accounts for less then one millionth the usage of a device for 6 or more months that could cause tens of billions in loss for a company is a stupid ban plain and simple. It would be an injuction with the sole purpose of attritioning the defendant into admitting guilt.
There is very little possibility Microsoft would infringe on a patent agreement. It manages millions of patent agreements.

However, Microsoft can deal with this the same way they dealt with DVD playback. Make the user pay the royalty fees. All they have to do is not have h.264 support in Internet Explorer and then have the user get a codec for it on their own. Restricting software to a patent could lead to the patent holder gouging prices on royalty fees once it has become an integral piece of the software. Microsoft should know this practice better then most.

 

[SAL-e]

[citation][nom]drosencraft[/nom]Partly true. Usually legal jurisdiction is based on the defendant. Motorola is suing Microsoft. Microsoft's home jurisdiction is the U.S. As such, US law is what would normally apply in most cases against general business practices for MSFT (which a patent case is). Now, if Motorola's complaint was against something unique and specific to Germany, Germany would likely have the ability to ban MSFT products or what not specifically in Germany. Otherwise, Germany and the US would require negotiations for meeting each other's concerns/interpretation of applicable international law.[/citation]
I'm not a lawyer, so my understanding is limited. My understanding is that patents that MS is guilty in infringing are issued in Germany. That is why Motorola Mobility sued MS in German court. Because the patents are geographically bound there is US patents that are equivalent of the patents in Germany. Never the less both set of patents are covering same technology and now this technology is part of the standard. Motorola Mobility has entered into contract obligations with standards body when it agree to contribute their technology into the standard. Microsoft claims to be 3rd party beneficiary of that contract and asked the judge to resolve the dispute between MS and Motorola. The problem is that contract has worldwide scope, but US district judge only have limited jurisdiction. So we are in the gray area of the law. If you have biased against Motorola/Google you will agree that US judge should enforce worldwide judgment, but this creates very dangerous president. What would happen if Chinese court decide to enforce worldwide judgment against MS or other US company next time?

 

[SAL-e]

@Gundam288
As far as I know all patents of old Motorola were sold to Motorola Mobility/Google. Most likely Motorola Solutions as part of the deal have irrevocable and cheap/free license from Google about those patents. But we are never going to know unless there is FTC investigation and this info becomes public record.

 

[sykozis]

[citation][nom]scannall[/nom]I think you forgot the /s there. Windows 1.0 was dreadful. Nothing more than a DOS overlay, that really didn't work very well. Windows was pretty much a joke until Win 95. And wasn't actually good until Win 98 SE. Which they trashed a little while later with Windows ME. *shudder*[/citation]
Windows was nothing but "a DOS overlay" until WindowsXP.

[citation][nom]sulanis[/nom]oh look, another patent war![/citation]
This one has been going on for a while now....

 

[ericburnby]

[citation][nom]SAL-e[/nom]Fact checking:1. Groklaw was started and still run by very experienced (and retired) paralegal with initials PJ. (Anti)FOSSpatents is run by Florian, who claims to be "Legal/Patents Expert".2. Florian is only taking interest in cases that he is paid for it and always on the side of the paying client. PJ on the other hand takes interest in cases that are against FOSS and never gets paid for her work.3. Florian always uses carefully selected quotes often taken out of their context and never provide links to the original documents. Several times he is using unofficial documents past to him by his paying customers. PJ always links to original and official court documents.4. Florian is in the business of predicting the outcome of the court cases and and always in favor of his clients. (Good example was how he predicted the end of Android in Oracle vs. Google). PJ never predicts what the judge would do and sometime try to explain why judges are making decisions based on applicable law as she understands it.5. Both site/blogs started around SCO vs Linux saga. And yes Groklaw / PJ has sympathy for FOSS, but so far remains professional and has open commenting section where you can express your opposition if you disagree with her reporting. (Anti)Fosspatents blog don't have comments at all.So, NO, Groklaw is nothing like (Anti)Fosspatents.[/citation]
Groklaw is anti-MS and anti-Apple. Whenever MS or Apple wins a case they have little to no coverage, and if they do they put their spin on the ruling to make it seem less like a win and spend more time talking about the upcoming appeal instead of the actual result. And when Apple or MS loses they go in-depth to explain why. You call that being "fair"?

For example, the jury mis-conduct accusation by Samsung regarding Hogan. Groklaw completely twisted the facts around to try and support Samsung. An example of this is Groklaw claiming the jury was too quick as there's no way they could have answered all 700 questions and spent any reasonable amount of time on each. What they left out (intentionally, I'm sure because nobody could be that stupid) is that those 700 questions were not all unique (as they implied) but were in fact the same 30+ questions repeated over for each of the 20+ devices.

All the jurors had to do was understand those 30+ questions and then answer them for each device. It would be easy to pick up a phone and go down the list of questions and answer Yes or No as to infringement. But Groklaw didn't mention this. How could someone as professional as PJ have missed something so basic as this? Because they're biased.

I'm amazed you can't see how obviously biased Groklaw is.

 

[ericburnby]

[citation][nom]SAL-e[/nom]So, NO, Groklaw is nothing like (Anti)Fosspatents.[/citation]
You're right. They are actually worse.

One recent example: The Apple/Samsung trial. Groklaw stated that the jury didn't have enough time to answer 700 questions in 3 days so they must have taken short cuts (or worse). What Groklaw failed to mention (and this is a glaring omission from someone so "professional") is that there WERE NOT 700 individual questions. There were 30+ questions repeated over for the 20+ devices accused of infringement.

So the jury only had to spend time understanding these 30+ questions and once they did it would be a simple matter to pick up a device and run through the list of questions for that device before going on to the next. This was reported by many outlets (including FOSS) so I'm surprised Groklaw would choose not to mention this breakdown of the questions.

But it's obvious why they did: By claiming (lying) that the jury had to go over 700 questions it raises the possibility the jury did a poor job. If Groklaw had told the truth, then it wouldn't look bad at all and they'd have nothing to report to put spin in Samsung's favor.

But then again, that's Groklaw's style. Apple and MS have had numerous court victories and Groklaw rarely covers them (or if they do, they choose to talk about things like resons for appeal). When they lose, Groklaw is all over it.

Groklaw is nothing but a "pat me on the back" site for haters that disguises itself as a "neutral" site for unbiased and professional reporting on legal matters.

 

[ericburnby]

Sorry, double post. Browser crashed and I thought first post was lost.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]bluekoala[/nom]I beg to differ; Microsoft did not achieve mediocrity until Win 2000, when you didn't have to format/re-install every 3 months and the task manager actually did something more than 20% of the time.XP was quite decent and finally, Win7 finally met my expectations. Not that my expectations are completely unrealistic because I was happy in the days of DOS. It's just if you're going to add features, please don't make them a show stopper.[/citation]

XP was comparably unstable until SP2 came around (mostly for similar reasons to Vista, bad drivers at the time) and it was bloated to all hell compared to Windows 2000 along with inferior resource management fo what it did have left.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]SAL-e[/nom]@Gundam288As far as I know all patents of old Motorola were sold to Motorola Mobility/Google. Most likely Motorola Solutions as part of the deal have irrevocable and cheap/free license from Google about those patents. But we are never going to know unless there is FTC investigation and this info becomes public record.[/citation]

I've read that Google only got the mobile-related patents and the rest were kept by the rest of Motorola. IDK if it's correct for sure, but that's what I've read.

 

[wemakeourfuture]

[citation][nom]ddpruitt[/nom]Sadly I'm old enough to remember when innovation was the key to getting ahead (Windows 1.0 anyone?).[/citation]

LOL Windiws 1.0 was not innovation. It was a ripoff

 

[SAL-e]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]I've read that Google only got the mobile-related patents and the rest were kept by the rest of Motorola. IDK if it's correct for sure, but that's what I've read.[/citation]
Yes, you are correct. When I said "all patents" I met "all patents in discussion" or other even more accurate statement would be: "all patents that are inserted against MS".

 

[SAL-e]

[citation][nom]ericburnby[/nom]You're right. They are actually worse.One recent example: The Apple/Samsung trial. Groklaw stated that the jury didn't have enough time to answer 700 questions in 3 days so they must have taken short cuts (or worse). What Groklaw failed to mention (and this is a glaring omission from someone so "professional") is that there WERE NOT 700 individual questions. There were 30+ questions repeated over for the 20+ devices accused of infringement.So the jury only had to spend time understanding these 30+ questions and once they did it would be a simple matter to pick up a device and run through the list of questions for that device before going on to the next. This was reported by many outlets (including FOSS) so I'm surprised Groklaw would choose not to mention this breakdown of the questions.But it's obvious why they did: By claiming (lying) that the jury had to go over 700 questions it raises the possibility the jury did a poor job. If Groklaw had told the truth, then it wouldn't look bad at all and they'd have nothing to report to put spin in Samsung's favor.But then again, that's Groklaw's style. Apple and MS have had numerous court victories and Groklaw rarely covers them (or if they do, they choose to talk about things like resons for appeal). When they lose, Groklaw is all over it.Groklaw is nothing but a "pat me on the back" site for haters that disguises itself as a "neutral" site for unbiased and professional reporting on legal matters.[/citation]

I'm sorry for you. Your own prejudice doesn't allow you to see the difference between been bias and to have different point of view.

bias 👎 - Prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.

point of view 👎 - A particular attitude or way of considering a matter: "change his point of view".

Yes, as I said before Groklaw is reporting from the FOSS point of view and this doesn't make them anti-Apple or anti-MS.

In regards of the 700 questions (or 30+ questions times 20+ devices). Yes and No you don't have to have long discussion about each question, but the jury instructions provided by the judge and ignored by the jury required to provide individual answer and damage award for each claim against each device. They had to provide consistent awards for each violation and should not use the award to punish Samsung instead to make Apple whole. But no, Mr. Hogan is on public record saying that he wanted to punish Samsung. Not only that. The judge had to send the jury back to fix their verdict because the jury awarded all most $1 million to Apple for device that same jury found that doesn't infringe. Really?!
Some how it is Groklaw fault for reporting about it. Really?!

You are accusing Groklaw in lying! or misrepresenting the truth about Mr Hogan. Sorry, but Mr. Hogan is the one on record who lied. He was asked multiple times: "Have you ever been part of lawsuit?". He told about one of the cases, but didn't told about the other. Don't believe me just go and read the court transcript your self it is publicly available.

On regard of not reporting MS or Apple's wins you would be incorrect. The fact is that Groklaw reported about current issue on Friday, November 30 2012 @ 11:59 PM EST or whole 2 days before you read about it here. Yes Groklaw don't report in much details about the cases that are outside USA, but there is obvious reasons for that. It is much more difficult to obtain original documents about cases in other countries. And so far Groklaw only uses official documents that could be traced and verified. They are not in the business of creating rumors or spreading FUD. That is why I recommended them as a source. They have different point of view and I like to know others point of view. Groklaw is not my only source.