Quote:
Originally Posted by teh603
Anti- trust is dead in the US. MS received an order about ten years ago requiring an AT&T- style divestiture, and it hasn't happened yet.
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Uh, no.
There was *no* divestiture order and other than being found guilty of *trying* (and failing) to harm Netscape (which opened them to money-grabbing lawsuits left and right) nothing came out of the trial other than a ten-year monitoring of MS by the court.
A lot of urban myth surrounds that trial, starting with the idea that it was about anything but politics and political contributions.
Long story that isn't relevant here, but do note that at the time MS was the biggest tech company that was not involved in politics and did not contribute to either party.
Now they are the biggest donor to both parties.
Nothing tech-related passes Congress without MS being informed way in advance. *That* is what antitrust achieved.
As to the actual topic, Patent enforcement is not generally an area for anti-trust; it is an area for contract law. That is why they are negotiating. In negotiations either side can ask for whatever they want. Whether they get it or not depends on what the other side has.
B&N came to the negotiations empty handed because they have no technology patents they can assert. Their basic choice, other than whine and pout in public and scream for somebody, anybody, to rescue them, is to either pay up or force MS to take them to court and pay legal expenses up the wazoo and *then* pay up to MS.
Everybody cheers when the big guys like MS, Apple, and Amazon get sued over patents but boos when *they* assert their rights. Well, rights belong to everybody or they belong to nobody. Patent law doesn't differentiate between big and small, rich or poor.
And patents tend to be about very specific ideas, not implementation, so it is possible to infringe innocently, but that is still no excuse.
That even patent-rich companies like Samsung are meekly settling with MS is ample evidence they have a case. That Google keeps quiet and does nothing to immunize/assist the users of their product (as MS does with OEMs that rely on *their* products, as Apple is doing in their in-app buying spat) is further evidence there is fire under the smoke. That the nature of that case is kept confidential is also part of the game (witness Amazon's quiet settlement, yesterday, with Discovery over Kindle).
All that is business as usual in the technology world. B&N is not a technology company but they're trying to play in that world without understanding it and they went for expediency instead of due diligence; now they have to face the consequences.
And, for the record: MS and Amazon had their own little patent "chat" last year. Amazon quietly negotiated and since *they* have quality tech patents of their own both sides settled without drama like professionals.
It's the clueless amateurs that whine.