Barnes & Noble wants US to investigate Microsoft

BOOKSELLER Barnes & Noble is petitioning US regulators with a complaint that Microsoft is being anti-competitive and monopolising the mobile device market.

Microsoft is up to its knees in Android and regularly announces that it has signed patent licensing deals for it. With this sort of thing in mind B&N warned that it is abusing its position and behaving in an overbearing manner with its repeated and weak patent claims.

"Microsoft is embarking on a campaign of asserting trivial and outmoded patents against manufacturers of Android devices," wrote the firm to Gene Kimmelman, the US Department of Justice chief counsel for competition policy, in a letter that was written in October but seen by Bloomberg this week.

"Microsoft is attempting to raise its rivals' costs in order to drive out competition and to deter innovation in mobile devices," it added.

Barnes & Noble alleged that Microsoft is doing this in a variety of ways, one of which is its habit of hoovering up patents, as it did when it joined the Rockstar consortium with other firms including Apple in order to share access to Nortel's patents portfolio.

Such tactics are used by Microsoft to "raise its rivals' costs and prevent Android- based devices from taking away sales of Microsoft's Windows operating system," wrote Peter Barbur, of law firm Cravath Swaine & Moore in New York, in the letter on behalf of the US bookseller.

Barnes & Noble suggested that Microsoft is charging as much in patent fees for Android as it charges for its own Windows Phone operating system. µ