Microsoft has signed their 10th Android patent deal this weekend, coming into money via Compal Electronics of China.
The company has coerced deals out of Samsung, HTC, Wistron, Quanta, Acer and General Dynamics Itronix.
As with past deals the patent agreement covers all Android or Chrome OS tablets, smartphones and e-readers Compal creates.
Compal, while not a household name in ... [ read the full article ]
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Nothing is 100% free, but if you come to agreements then things will be fine.
Unlike what Apple are doing with all the patent suites which only screw around those who aren't interested in Apple products anyway, so puts them off even more so.
This is (mostly) how things are meant to be done under the current crazy system...while Apple simply uses patents to block competition, Microsoft makes more money on patent fees for Android than they do on WinPhone7 sales.
The only really shady part is that a lot of the patents they have were open source releases that were not patented by the original creators, which microsoft got patents on through less than ethical ways. Plus, a lot of the patents are insanely vague, some covering things that were being done before Microsoft existed.
