ing. Also, vendors may have to find alternate ways to implement a feature or solution to a problem to avoid patent infringement, and the associated costs could end up delaying the release of a particular model or solution too. MICROSOFT AND THE ANDROID PATENT MONEY TRAIN To understand the cost of patents and the effect this can have on companies, we need go no further than Microsoft, whom some industry watchers project is making more money from Android devices than its own Windows phone division. Analysts estimate that Microsoft must be making nearly $2 billion every financial year, just from its Android licensing agreements s(see http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-is-making-2bn-a-year on-android-licensing-five-times-more-than-windows-phone-7000022936/).So how exactly did Microsoft end up making so much money out of Android device sales? Microsoft has been claiming violations on its patents by open source Linux software for quite a long time. In 2007, Microsoft made claims about Linux violating close to 235 software patents that were owned by Microsoft (http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/inde htm?source=yahoo_quote). In the previous year, Microsoft had already signed an interoperability pact with Novell, which though touted at that time to be a deal to promote SUSE Linux, was widely seen by analysts as protection offered by Microsoft to SUSE Linux users from patent violation damages (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ news/press/2006/nov06/11-02msnovellpr.aspx). Novell had already been recognized as the owner of UNIX copyright in a case brought out by SCO against Linux vendors (http://www.groklaw.net/pdf2/Novell-846.pdf). So when Google started promoting the Android operating system as open source software, the fact that it is based on a Linux kernel made it vulnerable toward patent infringement suits. In 2011, Microsoft won a key patent decision that Motorola mobility violated Microsoft's patents in making its Android handsets http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/dec