“Google Inc. and a Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. (MMI) unit must turn over to Apple Inc. (AAPL) information about Google’s development its Android operating system, a U.S. judge ruled in a patent dispute,” Andrew Harris reports for Bloomberg.
“The Motorola Mobility unit and Google must also hand over to Apple information about Google’s pending $12.5 billion acquisition of the mobile-phone maker, U.S. Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner in Chicago ruled today,” Harris reports. “Posner’s decision came in a patent lawsuit filed in 2010 by Cupertino, California-based Apple against Motorola Mobility, which has countersued.”
Harris reports, “Posner, a federal appeals court judge who is presiding over the trial court-level case, has scheduled back-to-back trials before separate juries starting June 11. The first will address six Apple patents, and the second will cover three Motorola patents.”
MacDailyNews Take: Unlike Apple’s, Motorola’s patents are FRAND-tastic and, when all is said and done, the licensing won’t amount to a hill of beans. Our prediction for Motorola Mobility: All the pain they so richly deserve and then some.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Tick tock.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Opportun” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Motorola’s alleged double-dipping on iPhone 4S could be massive EU antitrust violation – March 1, 2012
Florian Mueller: Apple’s win over Motorola Mobility in Germany a ‘huge victory for Apple, bad news for Google’ – February 27, 2012
Apple racks up FRAND win against Motorola Mobility in Germany – February 27, 2012
Legendary judge hands Apple key patent interpretation victory against Android – January 30, 2012
Boom..
😉
Posner’s a pretty well known judge, it’ll be really interesting to see how he decides this case!
Hickory Dickory Dock…
I read somewhere that “proto-android” was developed in Apple’s laboratory and “stolen”. Is that right? (I can’t find the reference anymore.)
I think there’s a grain of truth there. One of Google developer worked at Apple before Google bought Android and he likely copied some of Apples work from the 1990s. Android is a heap of thefts from different sources.
Google Earth. Says it all.
Google simply doesn’t respect property rights, patents, privacy, ethical precepts, common decency, or anything else except for their own megalomaniacal, destiny-driven self-assurance of self-entitlement. Which at this point is rather large and intimidating…
Don’t sugar-coat it, tell us how you really feel! 😆
That’s correct. Andy Rubin, the current head of Android development at google, was an Apple employee who began work on a mobile OS while still there. That unit was spun off into a company known as General Magic. You can read more in the two respective entries in wikipedia.
Andy Rubin worked for Apple from 1989 to 1992 when General Magic was spun out.
That’s twenty years ago.
Twenty years.
There is nothing of Magic Cap (General Magic’s handheld computer OS, which was not really aimed at mobile phones and never used for one) in Android.
It’s absurd to suggest that it’s “correct” that Magic Cap was a “proto-android”.
Absurd in what sense? Aspects of his work ended up in Android which started at Apple, I’m pretty sure I read that Apple claimed this in court on Florian Millers blog.
You can disagree with their assertion but you can’t say it’s absurd without providing evidence. I can guarantee Apple had evidence to back up their claim if they made it in court.
This post?
http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/09/apple-to-itc-andy-rubin-got-inspiration.html
The relevant patent is still standing despite Mueller’s scepticism and it looks like Judge Posner wants a look too at Google’s beginnings.
@Xan …20 years ago – so what. If Google copied Apple code that is subject to a patent still valid, then so be it.
“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman
—Harlan Ellison
Got any marbles, Jane?
Eight, sir; seven, sir;
Six, sir; five, sir;
Four, sir; three, sir;
two, sir; one!
‘Tenser,’ said the Tensor.
‘Tenser,’ said the Tensor.
‘Tension, apprehension,
And dissension have begun.’
It seems now that crime does not pay after all. Google has been able to get away with a lot of nonsense. Its playground, the Internet is also under scrutiny. The Internet, in which no normal rules seems to apply, is rich ground for Google to be predatory. The Internet can be a force for good or evil, but when it is left alone without any regulations or oversight, the unruly, the evil powerful corporation like Google will always thump on those who play by the rules.
Don’t ever believe that the Internet will always be beyond regulations and scrutiny. If doing business or browsing the Internet is going to be an exercise of aggravation to the majority of normal users, the pressure on the authorities to clamp down will grow stronger. And don’t underestimate the ability of governments to act if the Internet is going to undermine the very foundation of societal interactions.
The Internet, at present is in a Wild Wild West environment. The government is reluctant to impose rules and regulations because it is afraid that it will invite fierce opposition from a vocal minority. So it is waiting for a new normal to be established by companies like Google and Facebook, who happily go about in their slash-and-burn campaigning style of breaching privacy as the new reality. When the time comes for the government to act, it will argue that since Google and Facebook are able know everything about their customers, why is it so wrong for the government to know everything about its citizens? I hope that this ominous event would not come to pass. The madness of some Internet players needs to be doused with a reasonable dose of sanity so that the Internet would be a safe ground to work and play.
“The Internet, at present is in a Wild Wild West environment. The government is reluctant to impose rules and regulations because it is afraid that it will invite fierce opposition from a vocal minority.”
The people who are opposed to government regulation of the Internet are hardly a “vocal minority, they are a vast majority of the users and the public. Did you fall asleep during the SOPA debates?
One thing most users should keep in mind is how and what Oracle’s Larry is going to “do” with Google. I have popcorn ready for the big show.
License fees, simple as that ….. Not to mention a lot of back monies owed …… Tall dollars – it will hurt Anstoled …..
Apple will never license it’s code its a stolen product, you just can’t ask for forgiveness after stealing the basic core design that Apple had developed and expect to keep using it. no matter how popular it is.
Now wouldn’t it be something if Apple took over Android, what other options other then gutting and killing the project would make it viable to keep all those who bought into the cloned stolen Apple base code.
Google will get what it deserves, and it will play it out as being hurt and Attact by the big guns in the media like it always does, but with all the proof that is against them and that can’t be disputed they will find out that that Search fieild is where they should have stayed, being theirs in this environment will kill Google and that it deserves all that it has commong to it.
But money has a way of corrupting, and Goolgle has allot of it and more bull sh** to along with that.
Now seeing Eric T.Mole behind bars would be a start in sending a very big message that espionage is not a game of hide and seek with a ” We won’t do it again ” promise that Google is so use to using.
Are u kidding me. Hello, this is a patent suit we are talking about. Behind bars?
Are u writing this from Iran????
Industrial espionage is a felony. I really, really hope there are actual code snippets in Android that are lifted from iOS. If so, goodbye Eric and/or Andy! See you when you get out.
The jig is up.
Look for Google to start trying to settle with Apple before Android is declared stolen IP and they have to pay their partners to withdraw all Android products from the market and pay Apple a settlement in the tens of billions of dollars. Not to mention a public apology by Eric T. Mole for his thievery while on Apple’s board of directors.
I wonder if Google will be driven into bankruptcy by this? If so, I hope Apple buys the name & search engine from the bankruptcy court, for ten cents on the dollar of course…
The battle has hardly started. Just look at the Google / Oracle litigation. Oracle has them proven with their hand in the cookie jar. Google’s own e-mail states they needed to license the Java code from one of their senior managers.
Guess what, with the bank roll Google has, expect them to fight on and on, years and years. Only when search/ad revenues peak will you see any movement toward settling these open suits.
Being forced to reveal information by court order is just one of the many ways Google is more “open”
LOL!
Excellent! I may have to steal that line for a FB post today. Please don’t sue me.
Umm, I happen to know that a friend from school developed what became Google Earth. Google purchased it from him, and hired him and his team as contractors. How much of what was done from that point forward, I’d have to ask… That was at least 10 years ago, and I think further back really. Here is a link…
http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2011/03/video-history-google-earth/
Google 2012 RIP
This will be very interesting to watch. I seriously can’t see google getting out of this without being labeled as thieves.
Unless they provide fake documentation of course, which I wouldn’t put it past them at all like microsoft did at a court hearing in the late 1990s.
The truth always comes out eventually. Don’t matter how big a company is.
If the documentation is proved that they copied Apple I think this should be international news.
I will certainly be spamming it on twitter to let as many people know how despicable google is.