Microsoft Shareholders in Deep Trouble

Microsoft is suing Motorola over nine patent infringements:

Microsoft Corp. today filed a patent infringe­ment action against Motorola, Inc. and issued the fol­low­ing state­ment from Horacio Gutierrez, cor­po­rate vice pres­i­dent and deputy gen­eral coun­sel of Intellectual Property and Licensing:

The state­ment from Mr. Gutierrez follows:

Microsoft filed an action today in the International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against Motorola, Inc. for infringe­ment of nine Microsoft patents by Motorola’s Android-based smart­phones. The patents at issue relate to a range of func­tion­al­ity embod­ied in Motorola’s Android smart­phone devices that are essen­tial to the smart­phone user expe­ri­ence, includ­ing syn­chro­niz­ing email, cal­en­dars and con­tacts, sched­ul­ing meet­ings, and noti­fy­ing appli­ca­tions of changes in sig­nal strength and bat­tery power.

I do not know how “syn­chro­niz­ing email, cal­en­dars and con­tacts” or “sched­ul­ing meet­ings” is some­thing not obvi­ous enough to be impos­si­ble to patent but it gets even more ridicu­lous in the con­text of the last part:

We have a respon­si­bil­ity to our cus­tomers, part­ners, and share­hold­ers to safe­guard the bil­lions of dol­lars we invest each year in bring­ing inno­v­a­tive soft­ware prod­ucts and ser­vices to mar­ket. Motorola needs to stop its infringe­ment of our patented inven­tions in its Android smartphones.

Is he really say­ing that com­ing up with inno­va­tions like “noti­fy­ing appli­ca­tions of changes in sig­nal strength” cost Microsoft bil­lions of dol­lars? Seriously, every share­holder who reads it should sell his or her shares right away. They were a really weak invest­ment through­out the last decade anyway.

[H/T Glyn Moody]