# Microsoft’s anti-Android, cross-licensing strategy revealed!



## Kid_Eternity (Nov 14, 2011)

Blimey, I thought Apple had the crown when it came to patent warfare but it looks like it's actually that old corporate stalwart Microsoft!


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## mattie (Nov 14, 2011)

General Dynamics?


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## Badgers (Nov 14, 2011)

Massive Dynamic?


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## editor (Nov 14, 2011)

Microsoft got pissed off with Apple taking over their crown as the most evil tech company around, so they've going on the offensive to grab that title right back.


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## editor (Nov 14, 2011)

Badgers said:


> Massive Dynamic?


Colossal Dyno-rod?


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## Kid_Eternity (Nov 14, 2011)

mattie said:


> General Dynamics?



Looks like some kind of defence company...


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## Hocus Eye. (Nov 14, 2011)

This is ironic when you think back to the creation of Windows and the battle with Apple who first invented that style of GUI and claimed that Microsoft had imitated the "Look and Feel" of Apple.

It is as if the first car maker to put the accelerator on the right and the brake pedal on the left sued all subsequent car builders who adopted that layout.

This patent nonsense is patently nonsensical. In the modern world, especially America it seems that only the lawyers win. Viva OpenSource.


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## TitanSound (Nov 14, 2011)

Yep, they manufacture engines for jet fighters and the like. Amongst other stuff.


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## editor (Nov 14, 2011)

Hocus Eye. said:


> This is ironic when you think back to the creation of Windows and the battle with Apple who first invented that style of GUI and claimed that Microsoft had imitated the "Look and Feel" of Apple.


Xerox actually. Apple and Microsoft both nicked it.


> In 1973 Xerox PARC developed the Alto personal computer. It had a bitmapped screen, and was the first computer to demonstrate the desktop metaphor and graphical user interface (GUI). It was not a commercial product, but several thousand units were built and were heavily used at PARC, as well as other XEROX offices, and at several universities for many years. The Alto greatly influenced the design of personal computers during the late 1970s and early 1980s, notably the Three Rivers PERQ, the Apple Lisa and Macintosh, and the first Sun workstations.
> 
> The GUI was first developed at Xerox PARC by Alan Kay, Larry Tesler, Dan Ingalls and a number of other researchers. It used windows, icons, and menus to support commands such as opening files, deleting files, moving files, etc. In 1974, work began at PARC on Gypsy, the first bitmap What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) cut & paste editor. In 1975, Xerox engineers demonstrated a Graphical User Interface "including icons and the first use of pop-up menus".
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface


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## Kid_Eternity (Nov 14, 2011)

TitanSound said:


> Yep, they manufacture engines for jet fighters and the like. Amongst other stuff.



Ah right. So weapons of war basically...


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## Hocus Eye. (Nov 14, 2011)

editor said:


> Xerox actually. Apple and Microsoft both nicked it.


Oh yes now you mention it, I did read that, somewhere, quite recently. As far as I know Xerox didn't go to law to protect the patent though.


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## Cid (Nov 15, 2011)

Hocus Eye. said:


> This is ironic when you think back to the creation of Windows and the battle with Apple who first invented that style of GUI and claimed that Microsoft had imitated the "Look and Feel" of Apple.
> 
> It is as if the first car maker to put the accelerator on the right and the brake pedal on the left sued all subsequent car builders who adopted that layout.
> 
> This patent nonsense is patently nonsensical. In the modern world, especially America it seems that only the lawyers win. Viva OpenSource.



What would you suggest as an alternative?


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## Kanda (Nov 15, 2011)

Hocus Eye. said:


> Oh yes now you mention it, I did read that, somewhere, quite recently. As far as I know Xerox didn't go to law to protect the patent though.



No, they gave it to Apple pretty much. Jobs and co visited Xerox and done a deal iirc. It was an Apple dev that actually created overlapping windows etc, that the Xerox couldn't do.


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## editor (Nov 15, 2011)

Kanda said:


> No, they gave it to Apple pretty much. Jobs and co visited Xerox and done a deal iirc. It was an Apple dev that actually created overlapping windows etc, that the Xerox couldn't do.


It's a bit more complicated than that. While Apple were trying to sue Microsoft for supposedly copying their interface (which had been copied from Xerox), Xerox took out a case against Apple for copyright infringement.


> Apple had agreed to license certain parts of its GUI to Microsoft for use in Windows 1.0, but when Microsoft made changes in Windows 2.0 adding overlapping windows and other features found in the Macintosh GUI, Apple filed suit. Apple added additional claims to the suit when Microsoft released Windows 3.0.
> 
> Apple claimed the "look and feel" of the Macintosh operating system, taken as a whole, was protected by copyright, and that each individual element of the interface (such as the existence of windows on the screen, the rectangular appearance of windows, windows could be resized, overlap, and have title bars) was not as important as all these elements taken together. After oral arguments, the court insisted on an analysis of specific GUI elements that Apple claimed were infringements. Apple listed 189 GUI elements; the court decided that 179 of these elements had been licensed to Microsoft in the Windows 1.0 agreement and most of the remaining 10 elements were not copyrightable—either they were unoriginal to Apple, or they were the only possible way of expressing a particular idea.
> 
> ...


Apple lost the case and all was rosy in the garden for a while as "Microsoft purchased $150 million of nonvoting Apple stock, helping Apple in its financial struggles at the time. Both parties entered into a patent cross-licensing agreement."


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## Kanda (Nov 15, 2011)

> The Xerox case was dismissed, for a variety of legal reasons



Wonder what they were.


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## editor (Nov 15, 2011)

One thing is for sure: Xerox played a massive and under-credited part in both Microsoft and Apple's later success.


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## Kanda (Nov 15, 2011)

editor said:


> One thing is for sure: Xerox played a massive and under-credited part in both Microsoft and Apple's later success.



Yup. The mouse as well I think.

Bound to happen when the key players of the Xerox PARC team went to work for Apple.


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## Hocus Eye. (Nov 15, 2011)

Kanda said:


> Wonder what they were.


From "Xerox versus Apple"
The last sentence of which reads:-


> But the principal irony may ultimately be that Xerox, which invented many of the innovations shaping the personal computer industry today but which failed to capitalize on them in the marketplace, may also lose the suit because it was filed too long after the introduction of the technology.


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## Cid (Nov 15, 2011)

Hocus Eye. said:


> From "Xerox versus Apple"
> The last sentence of which reads:-



Pre '95 US patents lasted 17 years from date of issue, so that's probably the case (they now last 20 years from initial filing, which I suppose is roughly the same).

Personally I think there's an argument to simply restrict the span of technology patents even further, perhaps 7 years from initial filing - patents weren't designed with the information age in mind after all, technology marches so rapidly that we see a claim based on a patent from the mid '90s as some weird throwback. They are necessary though, you can't expect companies to invest hundreds of millions of dollars without some kind of security.


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## Winot (Nov 15, 2011)

Cid said:


> Pre '95 US patents lasted 17 years from date of issue, so that's probably the case (they now last 20 years from initial filing, which I suppose is roughly the same).



It is in the normal course of events, but applicants could play tricks under the old law to keep applications pending (and unpublished) until the market had evolved and then allow them to grant and then demand back royalties - so-called "submarine patents".


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## Cid (Nov 16, 2011)

Ah right, cheers.


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