Excerpt from a timely intellectual property reality check
This story sheds light on the recent Microsoft-inks-android-ip-deals-with-velocity-micro-and-onkyo.aspx”>string of stories about Microsoft demanding royalty payments from various companies that produce smart phones built on Google‘s Android operating system. Intuitively, this doesn’t make much sense. Most people would say that Google has been more innovative than Microsoft in recent years—especially in the mobile phone market—so why is Microsoft the one collecting royalties?
The reason is that Microsoft has more patents than Google. A lot more. The patent office has awarded Google about 700 patents in its 13-year lifetime. Microsoft has received 700 patents in the last four months. Microsoft’s total portfolio is around 18,000 patents, and most of those were granted within the last decade.
Microsoft’s Android Shakedown - Timothy Lee - Disruptive Economics - Forbes
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