Doesn't work that way. I believe you're referring to required technology in
standards, right? What happens is that when a standard's being debated, all the
companies involved are required by the rules to disclose any patents they
believe apply to the standard or alternatively make a binding statement that the
proposed standard does not infringe on any patents they hold. If the standard
does infringe on a patent, the standards body requires that the company agree to
licensing terms (which may range from granting an automatic royalty-free license
down to just agreeing to negotiate some form of license) and if they won't the
standard is rewritten to exclude the patented material. Companies that aren't
involved in the development of the standard don't have to agree to anything, but
normally the standards body avoids known patented technology when they don't
have an agreement to use it. Since in this case Microsoft wasn't involved in the
development of the software you bought, you couldn't make any sort of case that
they'd agreed to license their OS to allow the software to run.
Why would
a company agree to a patent license as part of a standard? Well, a lot of the
time they want their tech out there, and people won't use it if it's not part of
the standard. For instance if Qualcomm comes up with a new modulation technology
that vastly improves cel phone signal strength, if it's not part of the relevant
standards nobody else is going to use it (because they can't be sure the other
end will support it right) and Qualcomm won't sell parts. So they agree to allow
it to be included in the standard subject to a fixed standard royalty payment,
and get higher sales volumes on their parts because everybody can safely include
it in their phones. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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