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Comment by sz4kerto | Hacker News Reader

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/09/google-and-micros...

"Microsoft and Google are pleased to announce an agreement on patent issues. As part of the agreement, the companies will dismiss all pending patent infringement litigation between them, including cases related to Motorola Mobility. "

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Those are just lawsuits between the two, wasn't the nature of the royalties for Android devices that they contacted OEMs and said "we have these patents, you better pay us or we'll sue you", and the OEMs paid up?

That's different than cancelling outstanding lawsuits.

That's how patent licensing works (albeit a comically overaggressive caricature). Do you fundamentally oppose the concept of patents or do you think Microsoft is doing something else wrong by asking to be paid license fees by competitors using their patents?

I don't hold either of those views. I was just pointing out that the parent comment by sz4kerto seems to not be relevant to the question asked by NotOscarWilde.

From the announcement:

"Separately, Google and Microsoft have agreed to collaborate on certain patent matters and anticipate working together in other areas in the future to benefit our customers."

Last time I heard that was with Apple and was more like "I won't sue you for this and you won't sue me for that"

That article very specifically says that we still do not know whether Microsoft stopped the practice.

Microsoft can still get money from Samsung, as Google produces much less phones and Samsung a lot of them, and simply using Android doesn't mean that Samsung doesn't have to pay for the patents.

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