Barnes & Noble’s Patent-Misuse Claim Against Microsoft Rejected

Bloomberg BusinessWeek: An International Trade Commission (ITC) judge has rejected Barnes & Noble’s claim that Microsoft was misusing the patent system in order to stifle competition from Android-based devices. Barnes & Noble had presented the argument as a defense in a patent infringement case brought by Microsoft. Microsoft claims the company’s Nook e-reader infringes on four of its patents and that the company needs to pay licensing fees if it wants to use the Android operating system.

Microsoft says that it already has licensing agreements in place with the manufacturers of 70 percent of the Android devices sold in the U.S. “We remain as open as ever to extending a license to Barnes & Noble, and invite them to join the many other major device makers in paying for the Microsoft-developed intellectual property they use in their devices,” said Microsoft Deputy General Counsel David Howard.

In earlier court filings, Barnes & Noble protested that the licensing fees Microsoft wanted to charge for Android were higher than the fees for Microsoft’s own operating system and that those fees “were sufficient to dominate and entirely preclude the use of the Android operating system by the Nook.”