14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft will continue to build its Android and Chrome OS licensing program throughout the remainder of 2011, having added two new agreements just this week.
In fact, it’s nothing short of a safe bet that in the coming months the Redmond company will ink additional intellectual property licensing agreements with companies leveraging Google’s open source platforms for their devices.
Acer and ViewSonic are the latest to agree to pay royalties to Microsoft for the patents infringed by Android or Chrome OS, or both.
When the new deals were announced, I sent over some questions to the Redmond company, and have since then received confirmation that additional patent license agreements covering Android and Chrome are in the works.
Brad Smith, general counsel and senior vice president, Legal and Corporate Affairs, tweeted yesterday: “It's safe to predict more will follow this fall.”
The software giant has already convinced an impressive number of companies to cough up royalties for using Android and Chrome OS. Microsoft made it clear that both Google platforms violate a number of its patents.
“Today's 2 agreements make for 6 Microsoft #patent deals in the last 75 days,” Smith underlined just before confirming that more deals will follow.
ViewSonic will be compensating Microsoft for the usage of Android and Chrome OS on its smartphones and tablets. Acer will pay the Redmond company royalties only for Android, a detail which was lacking from Microsoft’s initial announcement.
In June 2011, similar patent licensing agreements were signed by companies such as General Dynamics Itronix, Velocity Micro, Inc., and Onkyo Corp.
In early July, Taipei-based Wistron also agreed to pay Microsoft royalties for using Android and Chrome on its tablets.
Earlier this year, the software giant got HTC to jump on the Android licensing bandwagon, and it will sure be interesting to see what other companies will join the ones mentioned in this article.