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Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

Summary: Microsoft: 'Licensing is not some nefarious thing that people should be worried about.'

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

By for Hardware 2.0 |

Google is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft who made all these billions of dollars in investments' with its Android mobile OS, claims Horacio Gutiérrez, deputy general counsel in charge of Microsoft's intellectual property group.

Gutiérrez makes this claim in an interview with SFGate.

Speaking in relation to the huge amount of litigation currently going on between mobile device players, Gutiérrez said that 'there is a period of unrest and a period of readjustment, until the claims on the ownership of different pieces of technology are well known' and that licensing and cross-licensing is required to make these problems 'disappear into the background.'

Gutiérrez also believes that 'licensing is not some nefarious thing that people should be worried about' but instead 'the solution to the patent problem that people are reacting so negatively about.'

Gutiérrez goes on to defend the software patent system, claiming that 'many things that earlier were implemented in hardware ...  are now implemented in software' and that the 'patent system has actually played a role in securing the leadership that the United States has in this field.'

Topics: Legal, Enterprise Software, Microsoft

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  • RE: Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

    Android is standing on the shoulders of Linux - which is exactly where it should be.
    solri
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

      @solri
      Exactly! M$ has no stake in android except FUD and inuendo. same for Linux!
      LlNUX Geek
      Reply Vote

    • RE: Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

      @solri

      Microsoft is the biggest patenttroll
      Sultansulan
      Reply Vote

    • RE: Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

      @solri Android has very little to do with Linux. Linux is an open-source implementation of Unix, written primarily in C. Android is written in Javascript and based on a Dalvik open implementation of the Java virtual machine.<br><br>Neither of them have any significant relationship to Microsoft (which had little or no hand in Unix, and who's main contribution to Java was to create their own variant of it under the Active-X label)<br>
      <br>But hey - who want's to have a factual discussion of what's actually going on, right?
      spark555
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

        @spark555
        Err...
        I would be very surprised if Android is written in Javascript. I think you mean "Java", which is signficantly different to Javascript. Javascript is used on the internet, and Java is... for applets and programs on the computer.
        xnederlandx
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

        @spark555

        Let's talk about some of the incorrect things in your post. Linux actually is not an implementation of Unix. It has 0 lines of Unix code and is merely the product of trying to make a product that behaves similarly.

        Android does use the Linux kernel. Anyone who owns a device, who knows how to look at the settings under "about this device" can even see exactly what version of the Linux kernel they're using. 3.2 is using.... *looks* 2.6.36.3-g111d827.

        But, hey, let's not let facts get in the way of a perfectly bad response... right?
        Michael Alan Goff
        Reply Vote

  • RE: Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

    Microsoft is standing on the soulders of stolen DOS garbage.
    larryvand
    Reply Vote

    • I see you do not allow facts to get in the way

      @larryvand
      of a silly rant.

      :|
      Tim Cook
      Reply Vote

    • RE: Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

      @larryvand

      I do not think that the world's countries are willing to pay the Microsoft tax. Microsoft has had an oligopoly for too long. Now enough is enough
      Sultansulan
      Reply Vote

  • RE: Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

    I give MS Credit, if they have stuff they could have attacked Android in court but instead thy approached the vendors and said, "hey, you have a good product now let's make it 100% legal from our perspective."

    Of course I still believe this is nothing more than Exchange and Active Sync Licensing that others pay as well.
    slickjim
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

      @Peter Perry That doesn't explain why MS are suing Barnes and Noble. None of the Nooks have native Exchange support.
      dazzlingd
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

        @dazzlingd

        That's probably some sort of file system support.
        Michael Alan Goff
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

        @dazzlingd MS has a lot of patents that don't impact the core of Android and like Michael said, it could be for Fat 32 support as I believe the SD Card uses that format.<br><br>One thing is for sure though, Google and Android are building Patents of their own and eventually, MS will have to pay for some of those patents as well.
        slickjim
        Reply Vote

      • Probably not FAT or FAT32 related...

        @Peter Perry
        The Samba project team came up with a workaround for FAT/FAT32 support in 2009. I believe this was the second workaround developed to insulate Linux based distributions from FAT related patents in response to the TomTom decision.
        jasonp@...
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

        @Michael Alan Goff Do you believe the Kindle or Nook is based on the FAT filesystem or any other disk system created or researched by Microsoft?
        spark555
        Reply Vote

  • RE: Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

    Let's face it.. the only reason this is even happening is just because of jobs. Jobs wanted the demise of android as a personal vendetta. After all, the only innovation that has come from apple in the last nearly 12 years is the iphone. They jumped on the bandwagon with big blue, his arch enemy and started building off of PC hardware, no new hardware r & d really except for the iphone.
    Lets look at the classic example of what happened between steve and bill. Steve stole the point and click from xerox and ran with it, bill borrowed the windowed system from steve. Steve got furious, perfect proof is the ability to run windows on a mac but not osx on a pc. Until the last 10 years. To me that speaks "I'm a baby and I want to say my stuffs better than yours because I coded my stuff to not work on yours".

    Now we have the android fight and ridiculous lawsuits. Once again temper tantrum steve. This all probably killed him faster than the cancer did. Just look at his own childish statements in his biography. Clearly he was becoming a little senile near the end of his life. Just watch and listen to video and read his statements.
    Now sparks news like this stuff. Ever heard the expression s**t rolls down hill?
    Nate_K
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

      @Nate_K
      This post reeks of "don't let facts stand in your way". Only innovation was iPhone? Sure, ignore iPod, iTunes and iPad (which btw conceptually was born before the iPhone).
      Steve stole the point and click from Xerox? He broke into the Xerox labs at night and stole the code and then just slapped it onto the Mac unaltered?
      But please, go ahead and explain to us how Steve contacted the other Steve (Ballmer) and plotted to attack your beloved Android.
      MG537-23482538203179240121698430309828
      Reply Vote

    • RE: Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

      @Nate_K Steve is somebody who couldn't stand to lose and when Google trumped him like MS did all those years ago, his anger burned... <br><br>Of course it doesn't matter that everyone who has used both iOS and Android will tell you they are polar opposites in their functionality, Steve claimed the OS was stolen property and the iTards applauded! Of course, everyone of the tards failed to find a single patent that Android violated which would require it be removed from the market (there has been one patent violation and it only involved the Gallery App for 2.3 which was corrected).
      slickjim
      Reply Vote

  • True

    Google is standing on the shoulders of companies like Microsoft and Oracle that did all the hard work.

    Google is trying to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs:
    http://www.timacheson.com/Blog/2011/feb/imitations_of_popular_tech_products
    Tim Acheson
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

      @Tim Acheson Yes, Microsoft did a lot of hard work. Stealing the hard work of other companies like Eolas, i4i, Alcatel, Apple, Digital Research, etc., etc., etmfc., is indeed hard work.

      And their Grand Theft Ideas is on the record regarding i4i. They're a bunch of no good robber barons, and it's all on file now. Your heroes are nothing more than thieving pirates who got lucky with a few products, but have pretty much utterly failed outside of those areas, because expanding your brand requires actual work.
      Third of Five
      Reply Vote
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