Foxconn hits back at Microsoft patent suit

The founder of Taiwanese manufacturing company Foxconn Technology, whose clients include Apple and Huawei, has shrugged off a patent infringement suit filed against it by Microsoft.

Yesterday, March 12, Foxconn’s Terry Gou told an impromptu news conference in Taipei that “patent infringement” is not an issue for his company, which will suffer “almost no loss” as a result of the suit.

On March 8, Microsoft filed a complaint at the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that Foxconn had breached a 2013 contract between the two companies by failing to pay royalties to Microsoft for using its patented technology.

Microsoft claims it asked Foxconn to provide information to determine the royalties Foxconn owed under the agreement.

But Foxconn refused “and to this date has failed to provide such information”, Microsoft said.

In yesterday’s conference, Gou said that as a contract manufacturer, Foxconn has never needed to pay royalties for Microsoft’s software, describing the suit as a “wrongful” attempt to extract royalties.

According to a report by The Verge, Gou described Microsoft as outdated and said it releases Windows phones that “no one wants”.

“Microsoft is falling behind in the smartphone era faced with the rise of Android so now it is adopting such a bad strategy,” Gou told reporters. “I really sympathise with them.”

He said Foxconn was an easy target for Microsoft, saying it was “too scared to sue Google for Android royalties, so instead, it is going after suppliers”, noting that “this should be a fight between Google and Microsoft”.