It is no secret that there are a good many Android OEMs who pays Microsoft a fair amount of money to license patents that go towards building their Android devices. For example companies such as HTC, Samsung, ZTE, and Huawei have been reportedly paying Microsoft for Android-related patents. Naturally this is something that OEMs can’t be too pleased about, since patent licenses do cost money and it seems a little ironic that they would be paying a company that has their own competing smartphone platform. However according to a recent report from M-Cam, a global financial institution that specializes in intellectual property and intangible assets, they believe that these OEMs could easily turn to free alternatives to free themselves from Microsoft.
For years, Microsoft has been claiming that its patents are used in Android, and rightly so, but it never revealed which patents were exactly involved. Until last month, when the Chinese Ministry of Commerce disclosed all the 310 Microsoft-owned patents. We know that a massive amount of cash is paid to the Redmond-giant every year for licensing purposes. But how useful are these patents? And more importantly, can Android handset makers look for other alternatives? M-Cam surely hopes so. M-Cam, a global financial institution that surely knows a lot about Intellectual property (IP) and intangible assets (IA), found that Google could save money by looking for free alternatives to most of those 310 patents. There was a reason why Microsoft never disclosed its Android patents. Now that it is out, more than 20 companies that signed the Microsoft-Android patents deals, can investigate on those patents, and may as well, try looking for alternatives. “By disclosing the detailed list of these patents, companies who currently pay a license to Microsoft for the Android platform may discover that they have patents on the same technologies which precede Microsoft’s patents. This may create an opening for them to either negotiate a better deal or demand that Microsoft license from them.”
