Hi Dave, RE: "I doubt Microsoft is going to enter the graphics chip business"
Of course not. Agreed. My post didn't imply MS was entering the chip biz. (I would think MS would not want to damage their absolutely healthy margins by carrying on their books some low-end chip-biz, to the extent that a high-volume chip supplier could do it cheaper.)
I think MS patents on MS chips have nothing to do with chips, but everything to do with competition at the top-level, a level higher than the chip, with the game manufacturer. I think MS can't protect the top-level game market through a (top-level) game patent since games change too much to have any real patent-value that could act as a barrier to entry for a game maker, so the only significant way for MS to protect its biz is through a low-level patent, at chip level. But MS has no control on chip patents, only Intel does, unless MS creates some of its own, right? Without it, Intel owns the barrier-to-entry that MS may need to use to protect itself, but who is to say if Intel can or would give this to MS, what would obligate Intel to do so? Nothing, so that's too precarious of a situation for MS to be in - to be dependent upon a chip maker that may supply your competitor with a feature you need to protect, thus leaving you without any defensible differentiation. It's not like Intel is going to create some chip-level patents that blocks a MS competitor from buying Intel chips, right? MS can't be dependent upon Intel in this way unless there was some way that MS could insure MS features were specific to them and not given out to anybody and everybody, so MS has to make their own chip-level patents to create this protection. What does this do? Protect MS at the top-level game level by attacking any and all chip makers that attempt to supply MS features to MS competitors that MS has patents for. It's clever. This is all speculation on my part, but I think it fits the bill.
None of what MS does here, defensible patent protection, has any negative impact to Intel's business.
Regards,
Amy J |
