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24 March 2011 ,
Written by Dhruv Tanwar
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Microsoft Corp. has filed legal actions against Barnes & Noble and its device manufacturers, Foxconn International Holdings Ltd. and Inventec Corporation, for patent infringement by their Android-based e-reader and tablet devices 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.
The company said the patents at issue cover a range of functionality embodied in Android devices essential to the user experience, including: natural ways of interacting with devices by tabbing through various screens to find the information they need; surfing the Web more quickly, and interacting with documents and e-books. Microsoft said the legal case follows a year of attempts to reach licensing agreements with the three companies. Its statement gave the example of smart phone manufacturer HTC, which has agreed to licenses under Microsoft’s program. |