David Drummond, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer:
But Android’s success has yielded something else: a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents.
They’re doing this by banding together to acquire Novell’s old patents (the “CPTN” group including Microsoft and Apple) and Nortel’s old patents (the “Rockstar” group including Microsoft and Apple), to make sure Google didn’t get them; seeking $15 licensing fees for every Android device; attempting to make it more expensive for phone manufacturers to license Android (which we provide free of charge) than Windows Mobile; and even suing Barnes & Noble, HTC, Motorola, and Samsung. Patents were meant to encourage innovation, but lately they are being used as a weapon to stop it.
So nobody besides Google can now bid on patents? This blog post of their’s makes no sense to me.
Whining is the new innovation.
That’s right, all of these companies making software over the past few decades? All of their patents are bogus. How dare any of them lay claim to any idea in a modern OS.
Says the company that couldn’t see its way to attract any help in a corporate battle.
You can’t patent the natural flow and progression of ideas, which is what most of these patents do. There are bogus patents on the description of common smart phone functionality. A patent like that should never have been granted due to the fact it is a natural progression of technology starting from the point of early computers. Like making a patent on a lamp shade after the light bulb was invented.
Says the company who joined with others to try and buy the same patents Microsoft, Oracle and Apple bought.
Anyone think they wouldn’t have tried to “strangle” those companies with those patents? It’s called capitalism, Google. Look into it.
Sour grapes. Suck it up Google. Maybe if your OS was original you wouldn’t have anything to worry about.
Drummond says, “the Department of Justice is currently looking into if Apple and Microsoft’s acquisition of the Nortel patents was for anti-competitive means.” And, when they are found to be above board, I’m sure Apple and MS will get a full and complete apology from you, won’t they?
Patents are there to encourage innovation – he said it. So instead of whining, why not innovate around those patents and prove to us that Android can be better than iOS. (Disclaimer: iOS fanboy)
Google is like a 4 year old. Google is right. Everyone else is wrong. Always. No apology needed.
There is nothing new about this. In the early days of radio, the “patent trust” among AT&T, General Electric, Westinghouse and United Fruit Company threw thousands of innovators off the air in favor of the NBC network and created thousands of customers for Western Electric who once built their equipment from readily available parts.
What may be different this time around, is that now that we’re a lot smarter and there are a lot more of us who understand digital data technology because we were present over many years of its development, a lot of these patents may be unenforceable because they are obvious to people skilled in the art to which the patent pertains.
Either way it comes out, the intellectual property lawyers are going to get rich.
Sure, and that is why before the iPhone, the natural progression of ideas gave us the Blackberry?! I understand your point, but lets be honest, without the iPhone, Android would not look or function the way it does. Would we have App stores? Prevalent use of touch screen? Apple didn’t invent any of this, but they just brought it to market in a way that nobody, not even copycats and imitate.
Not sure Microsoft’s beef is with Google, but it doesn’t take a UI expert to see Android borrows much from iOS (coincidence or not). TouchWiz is almost a complete ripoff.
Google’s business model:
1) Slavishly copy Apple iOS, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
2) Build personal data extraction mechanisms into the ‘free’ duplicates.
3) Milk the advertising dollars generated by selling people’s personal information to advertisers.
4) Preach about the value of openness and the evil of IP patents.
5) Whinge like a bitch if the IP owners try to enforce their property.
apple didn’t invent apps or the app store. I was buying apps from app stores for my palm devices in the late 90’s and early 00’s..until I got my Iphone of course. Apple made it cool and easy to use, and they were the first ones to the game…that’s it.