“The company that Google bought for $12.5 billion to protect Android from patent threats cannot even protect itself,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents. “Areamobile, a high-quality German news website focused on wireless communications devices, reports today (in an article that also mentions last Friday’s ruling) that German customers face a ‘heavily-shrunk’ choice of Android-based Motorola smartphones. I had previously heard something similar from a news agency reporter who is following some of the German Android-related lawsuits. Areamobile noted that Motorola Mobility’s German website lists only three Android-based smartphones — and no tablet computer.”

Mueller reports, “It appears that Google as a whole is struggling to keep up with the fast-growing number of Android-related patent infringements identified by courts in the United States, Europe and Asia. Google engineers probably have to spend a significant part of their time now on workarounds. And in some cases, workarounds would result in incompatibilities with many (or even all) existing Android apps.”

Mueller reports, “But to be clear, now-Google-owned Motorola Mobility is not a victim. It was Motorola Mobility’s choice in the spring of 2011 to sue Apple in Mannheim before Apple filed any lawsuit against it outside the United States, and to sue Microsoft in Mannheim in the summer of 2011, also before Microsoft filed any non-U.S. lawsuit against it. Motorola Mobility was trying to take advantage of the fact that injunctions are routinely granted in Germany — and of German case law relating to standard-essential patents. For the same reason, Samsung also sued Apple in Germany before Apple brought any German litigation against Samsung. And Samsung has not won anything against Apple in this country to date.”

Much more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Google’s going to rue the day they got greedy by deciding to try to work against Apple instead of with them. – MacDailyNews Take, March 09, 2010