The licensing fracas Microsoft is whipping up around Android and, in particular, Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader gets another chapter today, as B&N submits its 50-page response to Microsoft’s suit. Their position and language are aggressive out of the gate, accusing Microsoft of trying to “marginalize the competition” and describing the contents of the patents in question as “highly obvious at the time [they] were filed.”
It’s a bold rebuttal, but not entirely convincing. Amazon and HTC, after all, didn’t find them onerous enough to object, and countless other companies great and small find licensing patented Microsoft software and patents no problem at all. But by attacking the patents themselves and Microsoft’s greater market-driven intentions, they might be able to poison the well sufficiently to make their case at least plausible.
