To make it clear, I'm not neither on Motorolas or Microsoft site here. My comment about Microsoft was a little bit sarcastic for it's old policy, a little sidenote how stupid this all goes. The fees are too high and Microsoft sued Motorola for that. On the other hand Microsoft used the patents knowing they are not allowed to, that's why Motorola sued Microsoft. You're absolutly right, it's just another misuse of the judgement system and another story in the Smart Wars. It shows perfectly how stupid and problematic the whole patent system is.

I finally found something on this.

Anyway, on the issue, if it hadn't been said yet. Unless the case in the US is resolved, the recent german judgement cannot be enforced by Motorola. And, by using legal remedies, Micrsoft could still push the issue for 2 more years, which would give them enough time for "clean" software.

I can post the full judgement once it is released if anybody cares. It will be in German, however.

Anybody looking for it themselves, can find it here in the next couple of days.
In Germany banning or restricting the access to any website is considere unconstitutional.... How was that in the UK?

;-P

Edit: Ah, fsck it, I wanted to post in the other thread...

Actually no the patents are part of a standard and are required to be offered under FRAND terms while that is being negotiated you can go ahead and use them as long as you are implementing that standard. now 99.9% of those standards are in the patent pool of which MS is a member that patent pools terms put a max limit of ~6Million a year. Now the other 0.1% is owned by Motorola and they want... $4BILLION a year yes Billion with a B. Now MS said it's waaaaay outta FRAND terms and when you compare it to the rest of the industry and the rest of the patents they are correct.
Moto and MS's deal fell through and it went to a US court for arbitration. Now while this was going on MS got wind Moto was going to get an injunction against them in Germany to block that they informed the US court and claimed it would cause an unfair advantage in the arbitration and possibly force them to agree. The US court agreed with MS and informed Moto that if they did get the injunction and carry it through they would face censure and contempt charges in the US. (People get confused here they seem to think that the US court is telling the German court what to do but they aren't they are telling Moto not to hand the court order to the German version of the bailiff)

Microsoft vs. The German Government. My Money is on Microsoft.

I'm personally glad to see the large companies going nuclear on each other with patents. For a while most of the big guys basically had a MAD thing going on and just cross-licensed all their patents, while using those patents to crush any small competitors they didn't like. But now that the big guys are feeling the pain themselves as they go after each other perhaps we'll have a chance to see some much needed patent reform to put an end to this kind of stupidity.

That's the funny thing. They're not saying that. Despite all the wars, despite all the costs to these companies. Their line is that they believe in intellectual property, and that they will defend it. I can't find a single quote from any of the parties to suggest the patents themselves are in any way flawed, possibly because that would weaken their case, but at the moment the focus is on FRAND in just about all cases.

Of course, my conspiracy ridden mind wonders if this is in fact a good way of asserting the authority of patents over the various courts, and that in fact they all stand to gain. To my knowledge even implementation of software cannot be patented in Europe, it can only be patented if it has a real world effect (beyond changing a display). So I'm curious as to what the patents they're actually enforcing are, who licensed them, and what precedent from these cases is being set here.

Do you mean the ones where Motorola is suing Apple because A) Apple didn't bother to ensure that royalties were being paid and B) Apple is a dick that thinks it invented the smartphone and is trying to kill Android using lawsuits?

Of course there needs to be an investigation as soon as somebody files the complaint, but by the same token, Apple brought it on itself by not paying the licensing fees for use of the patents on time.

Why is this just affecting Germany? When I lived there I was 2 hours drive max from three other countries. Not to mention shipping in the EU is incredibly fast. This just seems like an inconvenience to users, though a bit of a hit to the profits for MS.

It won't touch MS profits. As has been said above, this is just the first blow, and it's unlikely that MS will actually have to observe this ban before they've managed to resolve the issues.

I wonder though how many of them would still be valid if somebody tried to apply. A Welsh colleague of mine informed me that it's still technically legal for an English person to shoot a Welsh person with a long bow across a particular river.

I can't imagine that if that's still accurate or that it would stand up in court. I know in the US we have a fair number of those odd laws and I don't believe they're ever actually enforced any more.

Actually, neither. I was merely amused by the fact that Microsoft has had a history of "an abuse of a dominant market position" in the past. You know, those anti-monopoly charges and all that back then. I know this is different, but I still got a good laugh out of that phrasing.

OK, I wasn't sure if you were or not. I was mostly just curious about what caused you to post that.

I do see why that would amuse you, but these days most of the people I see posting that are fanbois of some sort.