“We learned on January 31 that Barnes & Noble had suffered a major setback in a patent-infringement lawsuit filed against the company by Microsoft,” Ed Bott reports for ZDNet. “That day, an administrative law judge (ALJ) at the International Trade Commission (ITC) had tossed out the company’s key defense, that Microsoft was engaging in ‘patent misuse’ as part of a larger scheme to ‘kill Android.’ Today the full opinion has been made public.”
“I found the decision thanks to a story by GeekWire’s Todd Bishop, who noted that Theodore Essex, administrative law judge for the International Trade Commission, had called Microsoft’s negotiating tactics ‘certainly hard bargaining,’ but not illegal,” Bott reports. “This, for me, was the kicker: “Even assuming that these transactions and the related evidence establishes that Microsoft is bent on eliminating Android as a competitor, the mere fact that Microsoft is targeting Android for destruction is insufficient to establish an antitrust violation, let alone patent misuse.'”
Bott reports, “Microsoft isn’t the only mortal enemy Google and its Android hardware partners face. Before he died, Steve Jobs said ‘I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.’ And he promised he would ‘spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong.’ Apple shows no signs of backing down in its Android-related lawsuits.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The screw tightening continues unabated.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Spark” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Apple goes thermonuclear on Google and Motorola over Android 4.0 – February 12, 2012
Apple requests U.S. preliminary injunction against Android flagship device Samsung Galaxy Nexus based on four high-power patents – February 11, 2012
Steve Jobs: ‘I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product; I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this’ – October 20, 2011