Flawed? [LWN.net]

Flawed?

Posted Apr 19, 2007 9:39 UTC (Thu) by rwmj (subscriber, #5474)
Parent article: The patent tax

Surely Microsoft pay actual patent licenses too (eg. for playing DVDs and MP3s). It is rumoured that the license for playing DVDs is quite significant.

Rich.

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Flawed?

Posted Apr 20, 2007 0:01 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

pay actual patent licenses too

I assume you are distinguishing between purchase of a license and payment of damages for using a patent without a license. The article talks about payments and settlements of lawsuits. I know most of those settlements include purchase of a license for future use of the patent, so that's counted.

What's apparently not not in there, and I checked the press release to confirm, is any settlements in disputes that never reached lawsuit filing and any licenses that were purchased upfront with no dispute. Add that to all the lawsuit settlements that aren't made public, and it seems to me that the $20 is much too small.