| Throwaway anonymous accounts are unusually resistant to ad hominem attacks. As frivolous as it may be, let's destroy your arguments one by one: > Wow, the MS hate really turns people stupid There is no research about that, but I'll agree hatred may cloud your judgement. In this case, however, the relationship between B&N and Microsoft is very suspicious - Microsoft tried to extort B&N who, in turn, threatened to disclose the patent list and then, miraculously, they became a strategic partner, Microsoft paid them US$300M, and the list was forgotten. > Microsoft, which has NO ebook story for their struggling mobile ecosystem, swoops in and suddenly becomes a player in the ebook market for 1.3 billion in one year. Something that makes very little sense. Microsoft's focus should be in preventing the erosion of their software ecosystem - once its share drops below a certain point and network effects stop being relevant, it's hockey stick all the way to the bottom. Having a failing e-book distribution deal that is not attached to Windows does not help that. And attaching it to Windows will only make it irrelevant. > And people like you, mtgx and rbannfy think this means MS patents were weak. Addressed in the first point. |
Maybe B&N could "disclose" what patents MS is licensing related to Android, but you could make a good guess of those too by filtering the previous list of patents for keywords related to mobile and operating systems.
B&N had jack squat on MS in this lawsuit, which is why they made a big noise about antitrust, which of course went nowhere. I suspect you've been getting your info from Groklaw, which could explain a lot of misconceptions around here.
> Something that makes very little sense.
How does a content deal not make sense in today's world? It is exactly to prevent the "erosion" of their ecosystem. The ecosystem today is so much more than PCs. They don't want people to go somewhere else (like, say, iTunes or Amazon) to get their content, because that's a very strong lure to join another ecosystem. Every major player is out there making content deals to tie into their ecosystem, and MS is right up there with them... Except ebooks was the glaring hole in their content story. And it's not going to be attached to just Windows, but to their phone, tablet and cloud offerings too.
As to the strength of their patents, you just gotta look at who is getting injunctions and who is getting paid in the "smartphone wars". Nobody's getting any lasting injunctions, but MS has been getting paid all over. (OK, Apple got that one big win over Samsung, but it's still up in the air.)
Just for some disclosure, I've been tangentially involved in patent licensing efforts for a small firm. It is very, very difficult to get any licensing from big firms, who would prefer to role the dice in court if there's the slightest chance they can win or out-lawyer you. Given that, I find it impressive how many royalty-bearing licenses MS has managed to get in the past few years. Including, of all things, Foxconn.