Closer to the Novell deal. [LWN.net]

Closer to the Novell deal.

Posted Jun 7, 2007 15:23 UTC (Thu) by AJWM (guest, #15888)
Parent article: Another day another Microsoft patent deal

This seems closer to the Novell deal than to the Xandros deal, in that both Novell and LG were given a large upfront some payment from Microsoft for their patents, and pay back to Microsoft a little bit on each copy of Linux. There was no mention of an up front payment in the Xandros deal, although they must have gotten something out of it.

I wonder how this is really expected to net out -- how many years' worth of extortion fees, er, royalty payments are covered by that initial lump sum from Microsoft? The suspicious might wonder if Microsoft really makes any net gain (as far as "patent" payments) from these deals and really is just paying for FUD. Both short term FUD ("all these companies signing patent peace deals with Microsoft, where there's smoke there's fire, etc") as well as longer term chaos and discord in the Linux community. Neither of which Microsoft is going to shed any tears over.

(And, does LGE and MicroConnect actually have any patents related to operating systems and computer systems? Possibly the latter, but anything that Microsoft might potentially infringe on?)

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Closer to the Novell deal.

Posted Jun 7, 2007 16:36 UTC (Thu) by DouglasJM (subscriber, #6435) [Link]

I would agree with this comment, and take it a bit farther. MS pays a lump sum to get these companies to sign a "Patent" deal where they pay the money back to MS that has been given to them.

So the company that signs the deal gets use of a lump sum of cash, kind of like an interest free loan. MS gets the much more important pay off of being able to say in court, "These patents are valid, we have companies like (Novell, LG... etc) paying us royalties."

To me, just another example of MS using it's market power and cash to slant the game.