

Apple and Microsoft’s patent troll spells trouble for smartphone innovation - mtgx
http://www.gigaom.com/2012/08/05/apple-and-microsofts-patent-troll-spells-trouble-for-smartphone-innovation/

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fpgeek
This right here should should be the end of any bogus attempts to make an
equivalence between Apple and Microsoft on one side and Google/Motorola,
Samsung, HTC, etc. on the other.

Yes, both sides are buying up patents and suing each other, but one side is on
offence and the other is on defence. There's no better illustration of that
than Rockstar.

Tactically, making a separate Rockstar was a clever move. It evaded the
licensing commitments made after the Nortel auction and opens up a new front
that the Android world (except Sony) has to defend. But here's the thing...
even if that is all Apple and Microsoft care about, it doesn't end there.
Rockstar is a free-standing patent troll with a mandate to attack anything and
everything but its creators.

Suppose someone wants to do something with Open WebOS. That would probably
fall apart once Rockstar came calling. Suppose Jolla actually gets somewhere
with Meego. They'd better not plan on entering the US market unless they have
a plan for Rockstar. Carriers and ISPs probably need to think twice about
buying telecom equipment from companies other than Ericsson. After all, it's
unlikely that Huawei (#1 telecom equipment vendor in the world) and ZTE (#3
telecom equipment vendor) are in Rockstar's good books. And so on.

Creating the Rockstar patent troll is easily the worst move so far in the
smartphone patent wars. The companies behind it no longer have any claim to
being victims of anyone. They are unequivocally the aggressors and we should
all treat them as such.

~~~
pooriaazimi
The Android gang is not offensive (yet) because IIRC their most important
patents are "essential" patents (connecting to 3G network and stuff like
that), which they can't go offensive about. Google paid $12B for Motorola
Mobility and was willing to pay another $3.141B for Nortel patents. They're a
publicly traded company, they can't just dump $15B for "charity" and
"advancing the technology". I'm not sure that had they won the Nortel patents
they would be as un-evil as they are now.

Apple is being obnoxious, no denying that. But Google is just being 'good'
because being 'bad' is not profitable to them at the moment. They're all
companies, and capitalism rules.

As others have said, hate the game not the players. Patents are good, but
patenting ridiculous "innovations" or attempting to license the patented
technology for unreasonable prices is the real issue here.

~~~
fpgeek
There's actually one other big thing that stops the Android side from going on
the offensive. The Android open-source code (like the WebM and other Google
open source releases, IIRC) comes with a patent license (as it has to, or no
other companies would touch it). From what I recall, that license permits you
to use any patents the publisher (generally Google) owns that are required by
that code as long as you don't sue anyone over patent infringement with
respect to that same code. That makes going on the offensive with Android-
related patents nearly impossible - anyone Google tried to sue could just
integrate Android code related to the asserted patents to get a patent
license, unless they already had Android-related patent infringement lawsuits
going (which gets back to using patents defensively).

------
blinkingled
FTA -

"Apple’s participation in this new unholy trinity is especially hypocritical.
In litigation before the International Trade Commission earlier this year, the
company alleged, and convinced the ITC, that various patents in the Kodak
portfolio are invalid. Now, despite its past representations, Apple wants to
acquire these patents to attack the Android ecosystem."

~~~
arrrg
That’s not hypocritical. If you can’t get them invalidated but do get a chance
at buying them you definitely should do so if you can afford it. It’s common
sense, really.

I’m really not sure where the hypocrisy is there.

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randomfool
So much money just to buy patents on things that have been on the market for
years. They're just trying to conjure monopolies out of patents that have
minimal value on their own.

Seriously- the $4.5B paid for the Nortel patents should have been spent on
R&D, it would be a colosal waste to spend a similar amount for Kodak's.
Regardless of who gets them.

------
Nerdfest
The good news is that this article is from an antitrust lawyer with contacts
in the Justice Department. The abuse has gotten so bad that even they can
probably see it.

------
programminggeek
First of all, these patent purchase articles pinning Apple and Microsoft as
the bad guy and Google and Android as the good guy are getting ridiculous.

Google spent $12 billion dollars to buy Motorola for their patents. Google did
NOT invent anything Motorola has done. They BOUGHT Moto and their patents.

So, now Microsoft and Apple are buying patents and they're the bad guys for
doing so?

Just because Google talks about how evil the patent system is doesn't mean
their some kind of white knight for buying "defensive" patents.

None of this would be a problem if Google actually had been building and
inventing their own stuff for the last decade in the mobile space, instead
they bought Android and got a bunch of handset makers to use it. Then they
bought Moto for patents. Google refused to license Java from Sun, they didn't
patent their own innovations early enough and they took good ideas from Apple
and Apple happens to have patents on some of them.

Google has enough money to survive this so called "patent war", but most of
this could easily be avoided if Google just invented and patented their own
stuff instead of trying to copy and use other people's ideas an inventions
without paying a reasonable fee to use them. It's not like Google couldn't
afford to license Java and various patents from Apple, Microsoft, Kodak,
Nortel, etc...

I realize as an engineer spending millions on a patent or license agreement
seems ridiculous, but when your company has billions, you look like a
cheapskate by trying to weasel out of licensing technology.

~~~
Goronmon
_So, now Microsoft and Apple are buying patents and they're the bad guys for
doing so?_

Microsoft and Apple use patents to bring forth lengthy and costly lawsuits in
an attempt to hurt their competitors. I'd say that's a lot worse than the act
of buying up a company for patents in and of itself.

 _Google has enough money to survive this so called "patent war", but most of
this could easily be avoided if Google just invented and patented their own
stuff instead of trying to copy and use other people's ideas an inventions
without paying a reasonable fee to use them. It's not like Google couldn't
afford to license Java and various patents from Apple, Microsoft, Kodak,
Nortel, etc..._

You don't have "enough money" if you give it away to anyone with their hands
out.

As a software developer, I disagree that I should have to pay to "license" an
idea that I had, that someone else just happened to come up with before me. Or
that it is expected that I should try to patent as many of my "ideas" as
possible so I can attempt to milk other people for money down the line.

------
rimantas
There was a time when "patent troll" ment some entity with no product…

~~~
bryanlarsen
Neither Rockstar nor Intellectual Ventures have no product. They are the ones
holding the patents, not Microsoft nor Apple. Rockstar and IV are the trolls
referred to in the title. The title is accurate.

~~~
czr80
True, although it's interesting to note that Google is also an investor in IV.
([http://gametimeip.com/2011/05/19/the-intellectual-
ventures-i...](http://gametimeip.com/2011/05/19/the-intellectual-ventures-
investment-list-an-unwelcome-revelation/)).

Not to say I agree with any of this, but I'm always wary of how the press
frames "good" and "bad" guys. The details are usually murky.

~~~
myko
Didn't Google withdraw future support of IV for just these kinds of patent
use?

