“The Google-led group of Android device makers sued on Halloween 2013 over former Nortel patents fails to present a united front to the Rockstar Consortium, a patent holding firm jointly owned by Apple, BlackBerry, Ericsson, Microsoft and Sony,” Florian Müller reports for FOSS Patents.
“The first one of the seven Android OEMs, China’s Huawei, has already accepted to pay up,” Müller reports. “On Tuesday (January 21), Huawei, the Rockstar Consortium and the latter’s MobileStar Technologies subsidiary filed a joint motion to dismiss with prejudice Rockstar’s claims against Huawei.”
“The remaining defendants, besides Google, are Samsung, ZTE, LG, HTC, Pantech, and ASUSTeK,” Müller reports. “Google is trying to get those lawsuits transferred out of the Eastern District of Texas to the Northern District of California. The Huawei settlement is a problem for the remaining defendants because it suggests to the court and possibly one day to a jury (or multiple juries) that Rockstar’s infringement allegations have merit. It increases the likelihood of other ‘defections’ from the Google-led defensive alliance.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related article:
Bad news abounds for Google’s patent lawsuits as Apple, SimpleAir and Vringo are winning – January 23, 2014
I’m not sure about this TBH. There’s a huge difference between Apple going after Android because they took things Apple created, and Apple et. al. buying a load of patents and swinging them around at a bunch of other companies. It smacks of patent troll.
The difference is that Apple actually makes devices. The devices may it may not use the patented technology, but at least the technology is protected.
Patent trolls are just buying patents to use in lawsuits. They don’t manufacture anything.
*may or may not.
Thanks, autocorrect. I love you too.
Patent trolls have no products. Apple is suing to protect their products. They are NOT suing unrelated “works” merly for profit. They are suing to stop the copying.
A patent troll would buy patents for Nuclear power stations or patents for preserving Cut Flowers. The patent troll neither makes nuclear power stations nor does it sell flowers. But they will go around suing companies who build nuclear power stations and Interflora. For pure profit. Not protection of their products.
Rockstar is a patent pool like MPEG LA, whose members’ ecosystems are obviously licenced to the portfolio (Microsoft’s Windows Phone, Apple’s iOS, Blackberry’s OSes most notably).
Only Google refused to join the pool, despite having been invited. Thus it’s no wonder Android is ‘targetted’, because Google has not licenced the portfolio, either for itself or for its downstream recipients (Android OEMs).
yes, Google refused to pay up to buy in when invited. Instead they formed their own coalition but failed in the bid to get the Nortel patents. .
Then Google thought they could just steal .
apple has worked out numerous patent sharing deals with Msft etc . Apple has said it just wants to get patents out of the way fairly but Google refuses to play.
Let’s say that I wanted to produce a new, groundbreaking product, and I got an exclusive license to use a patent that was necessary for my product.
Now, let’s say that the company that gave me the license got into trouble, and was too busy concentrating on staying alive to worry about defending the patent that they licensed to me. Let’s further say that several unscrupulous companies acting in concert decided to go ahead and use that patent without paying for it, knowing that the company owning the patent couldn’t afford to defend it.
So why shouldn’t I, in order to defend my groundbreaking product that this group of companies is now copying by using the patent that I paid good money to license, buy the patent outright from the troubled owning company? _I_ have enough money to defend the patent, and since I use the patent in my product, I also have a sound moral footing to justify beating these unscrupulous companies into the ground, legally speaking.
In a nutshell, this is what’s happening.
I have to agree with Dave. Patent trolling can be done by any company. You buy up patents then instead of making a product that uses that patent you sue another company who does.
Apple and Google/Android are in a patent war and once started wars always get ugly. Apple chose to take the war to Android here, as apposed to taking the moral high ground. A lot is at stake, so it can be debated either way whether its the right thing to do or not.
In the larger picture, it shows how broken the patent system is whether Apple does this (in conjunction with Microsoft, etc) or a pure patent troll does it. Apple has to compete within the current system, they didn’t make it.
That story reads like it was churned out of a machine translator after Mandarin was dumped into the other end.
korean
Google is always keen to get court cases moved from one court to a different one, or even from one nation to another, where they can expect to receive a more favourable hearing.
After Google bypassed the security settings of Safari, some British users started a court case against Google. Google tried to suggest that British users, encountering illegal privacy invasions within Britain should not be able to take Google to a British court, but that the case should be held in the US instead. A few days ago, Google’s appeal was rejected and the group has now been cleared to take Google to court in the UK to answer for what it has done in the UK.
I’m enjoying the result of these courts cases, really taking my mind off Apple stock. Is it below $300 yet, it’s got to be, they have had such great news in the courts.
Hold on I’ll look up at the top of the page.
WHAT! It’s over $500. Gee whizz Whore Street what’s going on?