Another lawsuit has been added to the increasingly complex patent lawsuit merry-go-round in the smartphone world. This time, Microsoft has sued Barnes & Noble, claiming that its Nook and Nook Color tablets infringe on Microsoft's patents. Manufacturers Foxconn and Inventec were also sued for the same reason. The lawsuits list five user interface patents that Microsoft claims are being infringed by the Android operating system that Barnes & Noble has used on its tablets.
Though some companies, including HTC and Amazon, have signed patent license agreements with Microsoft, the company says that after a year of negotiation, all three of the companies named in the lawsuit were unwilling to agree to a license. This gave Microsoft no alternative but to sue, it says. Keen to underscore that it was left with no choice, Microsoft also stressed that this was just the seventh proactive patent lawsuit that it had initiated in its 36-year history. The company might also be pressured to sue by its licensees; Amazon competes directly with Barnes & Noble, and Amazon pays Microsoft to license patents for its Kindle, so it is unlikely to be happy seeing Barnes & Noble use the same intellectual property for free.
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