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Subscriber login Authors   Archive   Sectors    Even though it
won’t say so, patents are now a big business for Microsoft -
UPDATED  The news that Microsoft had signed up Taiwanese company
Hon Hai Precision (parent company of Foxconn, producer of 40% of
the world’s consumer electronics) came just a couple of days
before the company announced its third quarter results. These
showed an 18% rise in revenues to just over $20 billion, with
profits standing at $6.05 billion – an 18.5% increase.  As with
the other Android-related deals that Microsoft has done (there
are 19 of these now, all helpfully listed by Florian Mueller on
his FOSS patents blog), the details of the agreement have not
been released. However, the press release announcing it does
state: “The parties indicate that Microsoft will receive
royalties from Hon Hai under the agreement.” This is also pretty
usual for the licensing tie-ups that the company does with
Android – money is almost al