“Among Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.’s more than 17,000 patents, a group of 18 may prove most useful in Google Inc.’s effort to fend off litigation targeting the Android mobile platform,” Brian Womack and Susan Decker report for Bloomberg. “Google is counting on its $12.5 billion acquisition of Libertyville, Illinois-based Motorola Mobility to strengthen its patent lineup as Apple and Microsoft Corp. challenge Android.”
“The inventions date back to 1994 and form the heart of three Motorola lawsuits against Apple Inc., making them among the stars of the portfolio, said David Mixon, a patent lawyer at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings in Huntsville, Alabama,” Womack and Decker report. “They cover technology essential to the mobile-device industry, including location services, antenna designs, e-mail transmission, touch- screen motions, software-application management and third- generation wireless… One patent from 2001 disables a ‘touch sensitive’ sensor when a smartphone is near a user’s head to prevent inadvertent hang-ups or dialing. Another from 1994 aims to increase data storage, while a third enables users to control when a global positioning system sends their location data over a network.”
Womack and Decker report, “Even with a stronger patent portfolio for Google, Apple is likely to continue to pursue its patent battles against HTC and Samsung, said Peter Misek, an analyst with Jefferies & Co. in New York.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Google only spent $694.44 million apiece for those 18 patents.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Since84” for the heads up.]
Since these old patents are over twenty years old it is time to put them to bed an move on. Ever single phone on the planet would be affected by this old stuff.
The issue is now new ideas just appearing on the market can not be ripped of by the advertising thieves down the road.
Correct me anyone if I’m wrong, but Apple has licensed those patents from Motorola very long time ago. If I remember correctly, those licenses are good in perpetuity. If Google is hoping to sue, or squeeze Apple for more money, they won’t be getting anything on the accounts of any of those old Motorola patents.
Therefore, if I’m correct, the only thing Google got was the protection from being sued by Motorola for violation of those patents in Android…
And how will this help them against Oracle’s suit? Not much I would suspect.
They may not need them to fight Oracle. Themajority of Oracles complaints hinge on the idea that an API is covered by a copyright and considered “proprietary ip”.
Problem with this line of thought is that SCO tried the same thing to squeeze money from every linux distro and they lost.
Precedent is not on Oracles side and if they were to somehow win copyright protection over an api it would be a disaster ruling for the entire industry.
Uh, no. Do you guys just make this stuff up?
An API is copyrightable, this is not an “idea” nor is this protecting the “idea of an API.”
SCO claimed that Linux violated copyrights, not used a copyrighted API (what API would SCO have that linux might use?) SCO was unable to provide evidence of copying of software code and lost.
The oracle situation is quite different, especially given that there are emails which have come to light from within google admitting that they were violating their agreement with Oracle.
SCO *claimed* to own the API to UNIX and various subsystems that make up UNIX. Linux has the UNIX definitions for many of these APIs, its one of the reasons that in many cases porting from UNIX to Linux is trivial for a lot of applications.
Actually you did remind me of something and I need to correct my first reply as it IS incorrect.
SCO did not lose on the grounds that an API is not copyrightable, they lost because it was determined they did not own the copyright to the APIs in question, the Open Group acquired them from Novell if memory serves me right. (haven’t been into the whole SCO vs. LINUX thing since about 2004).
So yes you may be right the Oracle case may be different, then again it may not, like SCO, Oracle is going after a company for using a technology the previous owner released as open source (at least partially).
I don’t think all the facts and evidence of the case are in yet myself.
My understanding is this: Oracle’s code (IP) has been found, unaltered in Android, they have a solid case. They even approached Google (hence the internal emails) and Google was Negotiating for a license and then arrogantly walked away from the table and just stole the code. Google will lose.
To a non expert like me it seems that some of those mentioned are in use on iPhones and have been since day one. Like the proximity thing. Perhaps Google studied all these patents and decided they have a very good chance of recouping their 12.5 bil from licenses to Apple. It is hard for me to think Google went into this without a lot of forethought. They may have a lot of information they gleaned from intercepting emails and whatever else the may have tapped from their search engine and street view “camera” trucks. I find it hard to think that Google is stupid, I know several of their employees. Play golf with a couple. They just grin when I ask what the with the 12.5 bil deal.
You think they will tell you OR for that matter know exactly themselves?
“…while a third enables users to control when a global positioning system sends their location data over a network.”
If Google didn’t buy MMI they wouldn’t have to worry about this one anyway. I’m sure the spigot is never off.
Just imagine where everything Google produces through Motorola will be perpetual betas. There would be a riot of half-baked, throw-at-wall, experimental products and the usual travesty of dodging from blame that they are give-aways and that users ought to be thankful to the eternally “do-no-evil” Lady Bountiful. With the newly acquired 17,000 bogus patents under its belt, Google has a license to vigorously steal, copy and pillage from others with impunity under the protection and horse trading of these bogus patents. And also the potential to become a patent troll par excellence.
The only thing that is certain about this purchase is that Google should fire whoever recommended it. Either that or promote them and sink the Google ship even faster.
Can’t to either as the guilty party was Larry Page.
Google is going to take over MS’s position as stupid company decision makers really soon if it hasn’t happen already. I would feel threatened if I were Balmer.
Google/Moto cannot really assert these old patents selectively against apple, but not against other android handset manufacturers without running afoul of anti-trust laws.
In the US Google/Moto would look downright unpatriotic propping up foreign handset makers like HTC, Huwei & Samsung against Apple.
Motorola has been asserted those 18 patents last year as a pre-emptive strike against 11 Apple/NEXT patents that kill the basis for android… I still don’t see how this protects android
The patents specifically named in the lawsuit are:
U.S. Patent No. 5,455,599: “Object-oriented graphic system”
U.S. Patent No. 5,519,867: “Object-oriented multitasking system”
U.S. Patent No. 5,566,337: “Method and apparatus for distributing events in an operating system”
U.S. Patent No. 5,915,131: “Method and apparatus for handling I/O requests utilizing separate programming interfaces to access separate I/O services”
U.S. Patent No. 5,929,852: “Encapsulated network entity reference of a network component system”
U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647: “System and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data”
U.S. Patent No. 5,969,705: “Message protocol for controlling a user interface from an inactive application program”
U.S. Patent No. 6,275,983: “Object-oriented operating system”
U.S. Patent No. 6,343,263: “Real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data”
U.S. Patent No. 6,424,354: “Object-oriented event notification system with listener registration of both interests and methods”
U.S. Patent No. RE39,486: “Extensible, replaceable network component system”
It doesn’t matter, because Google didn’t own the patents (and doesn’t yet own them as the sale hasn’t closed) when it released Android, which was sold to consumers. So Google has no defense against infringing on Apple’s patents with Android because it did not have any of Moto’s patents at that time.
Even so, Apple is claiming infringement on its patents, which brings to head either a patent battle between Apple and Motorola on whose patents are valid for the same invention, or the patents cover different inventions and therefore Motorola’s are not significant anyway except in Google claiming some kind of setoff if Apple hadn’t licensed them and also infringed on Moto’s patents.
I’m sure Google will now drop this lawsuit since patents stifle innovation… Right?
So does this mean that Google can sue itself for infringing on Motos patents? 😉