I support companies that license technologies that have valid patents. What HTC did just lent credit to Microsoft's FUD about their never disclosed patents Linux allegedly infringes.

Want to bet Microsoft will not disclose the patents? If they did, they would have to defend them in court or see them be completely avoided in one or two minor releases.

Those patents are worthless unless they want to make FUD out of them. The HTC license was, perhaps, in exchange for lower Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 licenses. Don't forget HTC sells tons of the former and expects to sell tons of the latter.

I imagine lots of the "settlements" they make involve such tricks.

You are simultaneously complaining that they don't disclose the patent numbers AND that the patents are worthless or invalid. How can you know the latter without knowing the former?

Your theory that they don't tell the patent numbers because then it would be easy to work around them makes no sense. If the patents were that easy to work around them, why would Amazon, Samsung, and LG have all licensed them? They all have the resources to put the workarounds in Linux and contribute them back upstream, thus solving the problem once and for all for everyone.

> If the patents were that easy to work around them, why would Amazon, Samsung, and LG have all licensed them?

If they are not easy to circumvent, why not disclose them, putting to rest all doubt against their validity?

One plausible reason is that, once disclosed, the patents would lose their FUD value. Even if all of them could be circumvented by kernel 2.8, every user running previous, infringing, versions would still be liable until their kernels got upgraded, something that's not always possible. It would require a huge investment to upgrade and certify all servers and appliances.

In what other scenario does not disclosing the infringing patents make sense?

My bet is they don't want to court-test those patents.