Microsoft sues Barnes & Noble for Android patent violations in Nook

By Tom Warren, on 21st Mar 11 7:21 pm with 10 Comments

Barnes & Noble Nook

Microsoft said on Monday that it has filed legal actions against Barnes & Noble and its device manufacturers.

The software giant filed legal actions in the International Trade Commission and the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Washington against Barnes & Noble, and its device manufacturers, Foxconn and Inventec, for patent infringement by their Android-based e-reader and tablet devices that are marketed under the Barnes & Noble brand.

“The Android platform infringes a number of Microsoft’s patents, and companies manufacturing and shipping Android devices must respect our intellectual property rights. To facilitate that we have established an industry-wide patent licensing program for Android device manufacturers,” said Horacio Gutierrez, Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Intellectual Property & Licensing. “HTC, a market leader in Android smartphones, has taken a license under this program. We have tried for over a year to reach licensing agreements with Barnes & Noble, Foxconn and Inventec. Their refusals to take licenses leave us no choice but to bring legal action to defend our innovations and fulfill our responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard the billions of dollars we invest each year to bring great software products and services to market,” he added.

Microsoft says the patents cover a range of functionality embodied in Android devices that are key to the user experience. The software giant cites the following infringements:

  • Give people easy ways to navigate through information provided by their device apps via a separate control window with tabs
  • Enable display of a webpage’s content before the background image is received, allowing users to interact with the page faster
  • Allow apps to superimpose download status on top of the downloading content
  • Permit users to easily select text in a document and adjust that selection
  • Provide users the ability to annotate text without changing the underlying document.

Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Horacio Gutierrez, explains that the company feels licensing is the solution:

“Together with the patents already asserted in the course of our litigation against Motorola, today’s actions bring to 25 the total number of Microsoft patents in litigation for infringement by Android smartphones, tablets and other devices. Microsoft is not a company that pursues litigation lightly. In fact, this is only our seventh proactive patent infringement suit in our 36-year history. But we simply cannot ignore infringement of this scope and scale.”

Microsoft is seeking to block imports of the Nook e-reader according to documents the company filed on Monday. Microsoft previously sued Motorola after claiming the handset maker infringed nine patents when creating handsets powered by Google’s Android operating system. The company also filed a U.S. trade complaint against Tivo in January, seeking to block imports of the popular set-top boxes.

Image Credit: Orb9220 (Flickr)

MSFT vs Barnes and Noble

  • GP007

    Well this is interesting, it sounds like it covers UI functionality? Guess we’ll see where this leads.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Nick-Rodriguez/1373330236 Nick Rodriguez

    The claims of infringement here are such that if Microsoft are suing Barnes and Noble for the device, they should theoretically sue Apple, Nokia, Google, Samsung, Dell, and any other tablet/cellphone maker because all if these devices are capable and have been proven to do EXACTLY what M$ is suing Barnes and Noble for.
    This is the kind of shit that makes you start HATING a company.

    • Alanlindsaycbp

      Except that this is very specific – and is an Android issue – and several Android device manufacturers have in fact paid Microsoft for the license

    • Wourelia

      pfff.. M$ is the most original stuff you can come up with? I always get depressed when I see people actually using this pun thinking it is funny.
      So.. You think its wrong for a company to pay for something someone else has invented and put time and money into?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Nick-Rodriguez/1373330236 Nick Rodriguez

    The claims of infringement here are such that if Microsoft are suing Barnes and Noble for the device, they should theoretically sue Apple, Nokia, Google, Samsung, Dell, and any other tablet/cellphone maker because all if these devices are capable and have been proven to do EXACTLY what M$ is suing Barnes and Noble for.
    This is the kind of shit that makes you start HATING a company.

    • Guest

      Really Nick? This very specific lawsuit makes you start HATING Microsoft? I guess if you wanna hate Microsoft you can, it just seems lame to do it because they spent nearly a year, negotiating with B&N, to try to protect their patents.

    • GP007

      Everyone is sueing everyone when it comes to mobile devices, phones are a big mess right now but you don’t hear about them here because this is MS centric. But you can look it up, every big phone maker is suing someone else, be it Nokia, MS, Motorola, Samsung etc etc.

      As for suing Apple, MS and Apple have a deal where they won’t sue each other over UI’s since the late 80s case Apple lost. It’s part of the deal so we’ll never have them going at it regardless of how much each other copies. Dell might have signed a deal already with MS for all we know, just because the only one we heard about was HTC doesn’t mean they’re THE only one who has.

    • Guest

      They have a patent agreement with Apple and Nokia that precludes a suit. Who else they sue is between them and the company involved. They don’t operate on your agenda. And I’m guessing from the “M$” and CAP LOCK retardation that you already hate the company.

  • Karel Smutny

    What a decadent society we live in that such thing might be patented? Really, “permit user to easily select text in a document and adjust the selection” might be subject of a patent? What about “permit user to easily turn on his computer with a dedicated button”, does anybody have patent for this, too? One could make a fortune.

  • Karel Smutny

    What a decadent society we live in that such thing might be patented? Really, “permit user to easily select text in a document and adjust the selection” might be subject of a patent? What about “permit user to easily turn on his computer with a dedicated button”, does anybody have patent for this, too? One could make a fortune.