Published at LXer:

According to Barnes and Noble, Microsoft claims to have over 60,000 patents. Fewer than 20,000 of those were granted by the patent office; Microsoft presumably purchased the other 40,000 from other firms. The result is one of the world's largest "patent thickets." Microsoft has so many patents that it's difficult to build a software product as complex as a mobile operating system without infringing dozens, maybe even hundreds, of them.And Microsoft is taking full advantage of that fact, approaching each Android-based phone manufacturer in turn and demanding stiff licensing fees—fees that are allegedly at least as high as the fees Microsoft charges for its own Windows Phone 7 operating system. Microsoft has also been cagey about identifying the specific patents allegedly infringed by Android vendors. Some observers (including me) have characterized the process as a shakedown.So does Microsoft's conduct run afoul of antitrust law? Michael Carrier, an antitrust scholar at Rutgers-Camden, is skeptical. "I'm concerned by a lot of this conduct," he said, but antitrust law has "limited tools" to deal with it. And antitrust regulators tend to be slow to adapt to changing market circumstances.

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