

Defending Android - rtrunck
http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/15/precious-bodily-patents/

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blinkingled
I don't have a problem necessarily with what the article is trying to paint -
Motorola acquisition, like many other complex decisions involving lot of
factors, can go either way for Google. But that's not the interesting part.

To get at the likelihood of best case and worst case you can't put out the
unknowns and assume each unknown is likely to have a bad outcome and then
conclude with fear uncertainty and doubt.

One such unknown is credibility of Motorola's patents. Scratch Florian Mueller
and MG doesn't know squat about this. No one but Google's lawyers do. In so
far as Google's lawyers are not idiots in spending $12.5B on the patents
without having some plan on utilizing/monetizing them AND Motorola has
actually not lost a patent lawsuit against Microsoft or Apple _yet_ and/or
they aren't paying royalties to them yet, it is premature to conclude that
Motorola's patents won't go far enough. That's exactly what MG says is likely
to be the case.

Then there is the bias, that makes MG again rely on something insubstantial
and unverifiable - How the PR notes of various Android OEMs were worded. MG
claims that makes the Android OEMs look disingenuous. Less professional, may
be - but disingenuous? I don't think so. Patent royalties are a threat to the
OEMs and they know it well. If Google could put a patent pool up that they
start with 25000 patents and growing and it convinces other manufacturers to
contribute to it under the OHA - it benefits the OEM immensely and they know
it. What is the other alternative for the OEMs? Go Windows Phone 7? Nice idea
but it hasn't made a dent yet and if it does they can be sure to pay what
Microsoft damn well demands - including choking their own throats with
exclusive licensing agreements. For the OEMs it is clearly in their best
interest to go where Google wants them to go. And Motorola for them was always
a competitor - that hasn't changed with the acquisition.

Here is another nonsensical thing - MG says Google will be forced to make
Motorola design better phones/tablets and that will mean they play partial to
Motorola. He ignores the fact that Google is all about more handsets running
Android. And Motorola isn't even remotely capable of addressing even 1/3rd of
the potential smartphone market worldwide - Google needs HTC/ZTE/Samsung to
fill in. Badly. There is just no way Google will want to even try to screw
over them. And the OEMs can always up their game and compete well with
Motorola on hardware, software update frequency, price and features. That
doesn't change. Bottom line? Little incentive for Google to screw over the
OEMs and little to no new adverse impact of Motorola to the OEMs.

I wasn't expecting MG to write anything insightful but he asserted at the
start of the article that he wasn't going to go all Dan Lyons and start
opening his mouth to talk without understanding - so here.

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rkischuk
We are in the midst of the intellectual property Cold War, and it's
fascinating to watch. If Google can use Motorola's patents to balance the
power in patent suits and avoid $20/device in licensing fees... well, they're
activating 550k devices per day, so that's $11M/day in savings. Roughly 3
years to break-even on that basis alone.

Google can use Motorola to force the issues that have plagued Android for a
while. Motorola devices will probably become "pure Android" devices like the
Nexus series, pushing carriers to abandon the crapware and carrier-specific
UIs they're infatuated with.

Most people I know with Motorola Android devices say the build quality is for
crap. I hope Google can improve this, but if not, I hope they can at least get
the carriers to quit layering garbage on HTC's nice hardware.

~~~
SkyMarshal
_> We are in the midst of the intellectual property Cold War, and it's
fascinating to watch._

I find it sad to watch. Any hope of patent reform in the US got a lot bleaker
in 2011 due to the billions being spent on defensive portfolios, especially in
the mobile space. There's no way these companies are going to let any
legislation pass that invalidates their 'investments'. The best we seem to be
able to hope for is that Google uses theirs defensively only, or adds them to
copyleft-style patent pools like openinventionnetwork.com or openpatents.org.
I harbor little hope that Apple or MS would do the same.

~~~
benpbenp
Couldn't they see patent reform as a way of avoiding having to spend billions
more in the future? I suppose it depends on whether each company sees the
patent game as a cost or a profit center.

~~~
StavrosK
Yep, a company that only uses patents defensively (Google, so far) would have
nothing to lose by invalidating software/business patents as a whole.

------
cageface
Citing Florian Mueller as an authority on anything destroys any credibility
the article might have had otherwise.

~~~
StavrosK
Which version of ad hominem is this?

~~~
cageface
It's an opinion piece. Credibility of sources counts.

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fpgeek
What is interesting is that the patent defense isn't just about Android...
Motorola has a bunch of video patents that are now not problems for WebM.
Given the MPEG-LA patent pool, probably not much that can be asserted for MAD,
but they've at least defused a number of bombs previously pointed at WebM
users.

~~~
Anechoic
>Motorola has a bunch of video patents

Motorola Mobility or Motorola Solutions?

~~~
fpgeek
Mobility. They go with the STB and video distribution businesses, IIRC.

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SoftwareMaven
_this is either the smartest thing Google has ever done, or the dumbest._

I've said that to myself many times. I've never had it (whatever "it" is) be
the smartest thing I've ever done. To be fair, it is rarely the dumbest,
either, though it tends to favor that.

If you find yourself thinking a choice will be this polar in outcome, you are
probably making the wrong decision.

For the record, I don't think MG is right about this being the (binary)
smartest or dumbest decision for Google.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Is MG ever insightful about anything? I'm not a regular reader, but every time
I do read his articles, I feel the deja-vu of reading game console fanboy
forum 'debates' from the early 2000s.

That line about smartest or dumbest is silly, not the least b/c it could be
both at different times (maybe a terrible idea now, but turns out to be a
brilliant one five years from now, or vice versa).

How'd he get that job with Techcrunch again?

~~~
aristidb
You did read it, didn't you? That's why he got that job.

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georgieporgie
These sorts of developments must really bring hope to the masses of
underemployed law grads I've been hearing about.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Yeah, strike two for patent reform. Billions being spent on patent portfolios
+ a glut of law school graduates = not good for legislation that could bring
sanity to patents.

