A new front opened today in the patent wars between large technology companies, as a consortium that owns thousands of patents from the Nortel bankruptcy auction filed suit against Google and other manufacturers alleging infringement. Rockstar, which is owned jointly by Apple, Blackberry, Ericsson, Microsoft, and Sony, filed suit in US District Court in Texas. In addition to Google, the consortium has alleged infringement by Asus, HTC, Huawei, LG, Pantech, Samsung, and ZTE.
[…]
Since then, as recounted by Wired, Rockstar has been devoted to reverse-engineering the patents and looking for evidence of infringement. “Pretty much anybody out there is infringing,” John Veschi, the CEO of Rockstar, told the magazine. “It would be hard for me to envision that there are high-tech companies out there that don’t use some of the patents in our portfolio.”
I told you Apple and Microsoft were patent trolls. They specifically set up a satellite company that owns nothing but patents, with the sole goal of attacking the competition in the courtroom instead of the market. What a bunch of low-life scum.
I’m surprised by Sony there, though. They use Android themselves.
There is a difference in this situation, in that the lawsuits are being brought about by companies that actually USE and MAKE products that utilize these patents, and not by NPE’s, non-producing entities that only hold patent portfolios and never make an actual product or use the patents involved for anything other than bringing lawsuits against companies that use them. That’s a rather significant difference.
This doesn’t make the lawsuits any less egregious, but it is a different situation. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, and the rest, make products that utilize these patents and, under current law, deserve to be compensated for their use if indeed they are being infringed, as the courts will determine.
Edited 2013-11-01 09:53 UTC
The consortium, however, makes no products. They are the patent troll – funded by Apple, Microsoft, and others. This is a common tactic, and it’s still patent trolling.
It’s a common tactic: outsourcing.
All these companies have outsourced the patent investigation and legal actions to a single company.
That is a really positive spin on this horrible story.
I think it’s just a factual view of just another stage in a patent war that has been going on for as long most can remember.
As in real life wars there are no good and bad guys or clean and dirty sides anymore.
I disagree. These patent wars are not to defend the work those companies have done. They are destroying the market so that their platform comes on top.
These patents are not for useful inventions that change the world like the paperclip. They are for simple ideas that hundreds of people have had before it was even patented.
I’ve made no judgement what the patents ware are for, what companies try to accomplish or who is right and who is wrong.
For me it’s just another stage or chapter in a long ongoing situation in which every participant has done things someone could/would consider wrong, evil or silly.
The people who make the rules probably are aware that it has become beyond messy, but I don’t thing things change overnight and if things are going to change it may take years for any rules are changed or effects are noticed.
you can’t be serious. software and method patents are outright silly. the outcome of this mess will determine if the patent system will be allowed to be used as a way to set up protection rackets for cartels. if it goes through the end result will be unending political and legal corruption as everyone rushes to get an upper hand over others irrespective of market. customers absolutely lose.
I made no comment if these things are silly or not. Most of them are, I just don’t see it changing very quickly or radically even if the people who can change the rules are willing or even already moving things.
It’s not like patents are going to or can be abolished tomorrow, the day after or even next week.
Patents aren’t nearly as important as the environment and we can’t even get that settled.
If trees could be used as WiFi hotspots they would probably plant more of them though.
Its a common, underhanded tactic to avoid counter litigation but patent trolling it is not. That word had a narrow definition that this does not fit.
The Rockstar Consortium actually has former Nortel employees working there and the stakeholders are just the major parties that facilitated the purchase.
That said, I don’t really like it when companies set up shell companies like this. Google (and its OEMs) are now in a very precarious situation. These are very capable and dangerous patents.
Some kind of licensing deal will probably have to come of this, hopefully not enough to make Android a non viable option.
This case does share one common trait with casual patent trolling though – the obvious nature of the patents, at least the ones covered by the news. Still, pretty lame even if some of the patents are hardware patents.
Sorry but you are wrong, if you want to go by that logic then ALL major corps are by default patent trolls since they nearly all have their patents owned by research divisions that don’t actually produce anything.
If you want to complain about something complain about the legal and tax systems that make turning a single company into a big convoluted mess pretty much SOP if you don’t want to get pounded by taxes or buried in lawsuits. By splitting up the companies like that you can have one part of a company engaged in a legal battle without dragging the entire company into it, hence why they all split up the companies like that.
As for so called patent trolling? Let us not forget that Google left the Motorola patent suits going when they bought it so they don’t have clean hands either and unlike NPEs Nortel did spend hundreds of millions in research to produce those patents which they then licensed with their designs, no different from ARM and nvidia on that front.
Google were invited to join the Rockstar consortium at the time of the bidding for the Nortel patent portfolio. The purpose of the industry spanning Rockstar consortium, and of the invite to Google, was to remove the Nortel patents from contention. Google declined the invitation. Instead Google decided to seek sole ownership of the patents and bid against the Rockstar consortium using bizarre pi based bid amounts.
Since Google’s refusal to join the consortium it has used Motorola as a vehicle to launch legal actions based on SEP/FRAND patent abuse using patents it purchased when it bought Motorola.
Now Google’s refusal to join the industry spanning consortium has come back to bite it.
I shed not one tear.
Of course you don’t shed a tear. You’re an Apple fanboi.
That doesn’t change the fact that Google sought sole control of the patents in question, refused to join an industry spanning consortium when invited, and used patents acquired through the purchase of Motorola to launch legal actions based on SEP patents.
Google are not an innocent victim just victim of their own hubris and stupidity for mucking up the negotiations around the Nortel bid so profoundly.
First it, the other group, was not Google but Ranger which included Google and Intel. Second Ranger bid 4.4b, Rockstar 4.5b. Theird only once Rockstar was picked an offer to Google came to join. Forth we don’t know the conditions. “You can join us if you pay 3/4 of the sum and …”? The offer was a PR-gag visible by making it to Google not Ranger, not naming conditions, blowing it to the press.
The Moto case came as answer. Sue us and we sue you and we cannot sue you if you not have products hence we outsource our patent-wars.
On top by outsourcing Rockstar bypassed the promise given by Microsoft and Apple to not sue which was condition for the Nortel patents takeover. See http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/February/12-at-210.html
Edited 2013-11-01 20:53 UTC
interesting. very good thing mono never took off and google never went with c#. MS promised never to sue over mono but using a shell company gets around any promises apparently.
The promise was not to seek injunctions over SEPs and to broadly license SEPs on FRAND terms.
Not all of Nortel’s patents are SEPs and certainly none of the patents asserted in this litigation are SEPs.
the investigation goes on to note that Google was more ambiguous in their promises and we can now see why, they’ve been seeking injunctions over SEPs since their Moto acquisition.
If anyone broke their promise it was Google.
cdude is wrong again. Why am I not surprised?
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/05/rockstar/ has some more acurate background information. Most notable
[quote]
When the Rockstar Bidco group purchased Nortel’s patents, the U.S. Department of Justice took a look at the deal, as part of a broader investigation into several large technology patent sales. The DoJ was concerned that patent attacks might somehow be used to knock Rockstar’s competitors out of the smartphone or tablet market. But in February, the DoJ closed its investigation, in part because Microsoft and Apple had promised to license many of their core wireless patents under reasonable terms to anyone who needed them.
But the new company — Rockstar Consortium — isn’t bound by the promises that its member companies made, according to Veschi. “We are separate,†he says. “That does not apply to us.â€
[/quote]
No, the consortium makes no products, but other patent trolls are made up simply of groups of lawyers that buy up patents with the sole purpose of bringing lawsuits, never producing products, a completely different thing. This consortium is owned by Microsoft, Apple, Sony, et all. Again, a completely different animal.
How hypocritic of you ignoring the fact that Google bought Motorolla and continued on going litigation against many other companies, while abusing FRAND licenses.
Not surprised…
Lets not forget history: Google was invited to join the group, but instead tried to buy the patents for themselves alone (remember them bidding PI http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110701/23392814939/google-tried-…).
This was simply error of business on the part of Google, sulking about being pressured into a consortium with Microsoft and Apple.
http://cdn.macnn.com/news/1108/microsoft-patentletterlg.jpg
Edited 2013-11-01 13:08 UTC
They wouldn’t pay more than $4.4 billion for Nortel’s patent arsenal but wasted $12 billion on Motorola for broadly licensed or FRAND patents.
Amateur hour at Mountain View.
Motorola is more than 80 years old and has patents and other documentation that will show prior art.
Lol, no it will not. Did you see the patents asserted?
Motorola has a broadly licensed and useless portfolio that had not netted it a single win.
Google didn’t buy all of Motorola’s patents. It bought the mobile division and just the patents it had. So it doesn’t have the semiconductor patents related to the old cpu chips ( those are owned by the spin off freescale). Nor does it have the cell phone networking patents that ( the networks division is now the major part of what will be left after nokia’s phones are bought by MS). Nor does it have any of the other Motorola patents related to the current Motorola solutions company.
You’re either naive or not getting the full story. The group was setup with the intent to use the patents as a weapon. Google has publicly stated that they don’t think patents should be used offensively. So why would they join a group created to do just that?
Can you show some evidence that it was set up for that?
How does that fit with Google’s Motorola division using SEP/FRAND patents offensively?
It is a company that has no products, but only patents. They are now attacking with those patents. On top of that, the company itself has admitted that its only job is to reverse-engineer other people’s products to see if they infringe, adding that according to them, every technology company infringes upon them.
So yes, they have been set up with the sole purpose of patent trolling, and Apple, Microsoft, and Sony are complicit in it. I know you somehow manage to simply ignore anything that doesn’t fit into your view of Apple as God’s Gift To The World, but it will be hard for you to get rid of this one – but I’m sure you’ll amuse us with your attempts.
Those attacks – which are fucking lame and just as bad – started before Google bought Motorola. Doesn’t make them any less of a group of assholes for continuing them.
At least you’re able to admit Moto/Google are just as bad.
Huge improvement over your childish “If I get punched in the face” analogy.
As I understand it, the motorola suits started before Google took over, and were in a defense move, not offensive.
There is no evidence I can see that the Rockstar consortium was set up with the prior intention to use the patents to attack Google, if it was why on earth was Google invited to Join? However since the Rockstar acquisition of those patents, an acquisition that Google volunteered not to participate in, Google has continued to deploy SEP based patent attacks. Now the Rockstar patent portfolio is being used to counterattack. What did Google expect?
https://twitter.com/BradSmi/status/98902130412355585
Brad Smith, the general counsel of Microsoft 3rd August 2011
Nice spinning.
Apple and Microsoft started the patent war versus Android.
Nice spin on the history of IP legal actions around smart phones.
Motorola sued Apple first, as did Nokia.
Full legal action chronology is here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone_wars
Also worth adding that an Android vendor, Sony, is part of the Rockstar consortium.
Pitching this as a battle between Microsoft, Apple and Android is a false polarisation. What this is about is the failure of Google’s IP strategy around Android (which was of course of to render all other companies IP literally worthless whilst preserving the value of Google’s own IP and off loading all the risks onto the Android OEMs).
Sony is part of the consortium, yes (~10% ownership). Hurting Android could hurt them in the long term, but could pay dividends in the short term.
If Samsung, HTC, ASUS, LG, Huawei, ZTE and Motorola all took a hit with their Android phones, the only major Android smartphone OEM in the clear would be Sony. Driving up costs and/or spreading some FUD among your competition, can make things a little better for Sony, at least in the short term.
Uhm, no. The first action against Android:
“Apple sues HTC over 10 patents and files an ITC complaint against HTC over 10 other patents.”
Nice try, Mr. Spin.
Google didn’t buy into the Rockstar consortium for a simple reason. The offer was apparently to Google alone, not the Android OEMs. Up till then the modus operandi of MSFT and Apple was to go after the OEMs instead of Google(and the first suit filed in the iOS vs Android wars was Apple suing HTC). Google wanted those patents to protect its OEMs by giving them something to countersue Apple and MSFT with, which would not have been possible with the Nortel patents if they’d joined Rockstar. OTOH MSFT and Apple could still use those patents against the Android OEMs.
In other words, they’d just be paying for even more ammunition for MSFT and Apple to go after Google’s OEMs.
It’s important to note that prior to acquiring these patents, Microsoft, Apple, Sony et al were themselves infringing on said patents.
Rockstar doesn’t make things, but Microsoft, apple. ect do. They are using Rockstar to attack their competitors, but don’t think that it can be used against them. If it’s not a “patent troll” then it’s something just as bad.
In some way’s I agree with you, in that a group of companies that are active in the market set up a separate company to pool their resources, and launch these attacks.
However, the impression I have is that they them selves (either the the individual companies, or the new one), have not actually done much if any of the research, it is using patents that they bought, for the purpose of attacking the competition.
I don’t know if I would refer to this as patent trolling, but it’s certainly unsavoury.
Yes and no. These lawsuits are being brought about by Rockstar, an NPE. From this article http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/patent-war-goes-nuclear-…
—–
Although it could be argued that if a court rules a certain way, then it is fair and right (and that companies “deserve to be compensated”), I feel that if the laws being used to come to the decision are biased and unfair, then the ruling itself will also be biased and unfair. Personally, I think the current software patent laws are broken in a fundamental way, and so just about any ruling that occurs is not justified.
that sony are a bunch of idiots.
Sony own <10% of the said company.
http://ia601004.us.archive.org/7/items/gov.uscourts.txed.148256/gov…
Unlikely they want to shoot themselves in a foot.
If that is Ericsson as in “Ericsson systems” and not the devices section mostly sold to Sony. Then this will be a very rough ride, their patents cover almost everything phone-network related ever since LM Ericsson was founded.
Hope this suite just fails and goes away.
that these idiots had better uses for the money they piss away on this patent shit. They could do things like… well, let’s think… make the new product everyone wants and blow their competition out of the water? Considering the money spent on this is money essentially given to lawyers for no product innovations whatsoever, one would think management would do a double-take before signing off on this crap.
Uhhh…hate to break the news to ya friend but you actually will end up with more money from the patents than the product as you don’t have to pay for manufacture, testing,shipping,support,returns, etc.
Its pretty common knowledge that MSFT gets more for the patents it holds that affect Android than they do on WinPhones so like it or not its a viable and sound business strategy.
If you can’t compete, litigate.
You know, I think Google and the non-american companies (Samsung, Asus, LG, HTC) should just.. leave! Yeah, leave the americans alone!
Let them play with their patent trolling and trillion dollar deficit stagnating evolution and focus ont he rest of the world that will, well, just move ahead instead of promoting stupid patents system.
I know, they want the US money, but listen: maybe it is not worth the effort anymore. You can win much more outside.
Edited 2013-11-01 11:05 UTC
I can remember lots of things that had big stickers saying
“Not for use or Sale in the USA”
Perhaps it is time for them to return. After all they can’t get the ordering right on date fields now can they?
If you had bothered to actually read the article, some of the companies pushing the suit ain’t American.
(Ironically, a big chunk of Rockstar’s troll patent portfolio comes from Nortel, which was a Canadian corporation).
It’s a global market, whether you like it or not. Everything is intertwined, Google leaving the US would be monumentally stupid from a business stand point.
It already is like that, and companies that pay patent fees, do so only for the US version of the products, where Apple and Microsoft are still stronger (In the rest of the world, Android completely dominates everything)
I guess this is connected to news that Android is claimed to be holding 80%+ of the mobile market?
I have to say I find people like Thom weird, so many topics about the negatice effect of patents (and trolling) but then buys the troll’s products.
I find very interesting the Apple and MS unite to fight Android. I never thought I would see them together to do anything.
Microsoft bailed Apple out in the not-too-distant past…
That was less of a bail out and more of a patent cross-licensing agreement in the wake of the copyright infringement case Apple brought against Microsoft.
Or it’s potentially a lose-lose situation for Apple either way. If Android continues to gain marketshare, Apple loses. If Apple helps Microsoft destroy Android, Windows Phone marketshare increases to fill the vacuum left by Android and Apple still loses.
likely apple does want it both ways. they would love to cripple android and get a cut of the extortion revenue at the same time. They probably feel like they can deal with MS since they’ve already been playing that game.
Best Frenemies Forever!
AFAIR the whole mess stems from the fact that Android uses a custom Java version that pretty much pisses everyone off.
Bring Android 5 on, new application model, no backwards compatibility. Heck, even Apple pulled something like this off…
Or is it just a dream and we’re never gonna be able to pick these patent-vultures off our own sad consumers’ backs?
Here we go again
Of course, where else? (people who follow patent trolling news understand)
PS: A more calm examination reveals that the patents in the suit are not patents for telecommunication stuff (those are FRAND), but silly overly broad software and UI patents. Yes, it’s the “look and feel” lawsuits all over again. If you are a patent lawyer, you ‘d better decide what the 4 colors of your 4 Lamborghinis will be.
Edited 2013-11-01 14:42 UTC
Nortel would not have declared bankruptcy if they had any thing to gain with their patents, but in any case from what I have seen there is plenty of prior art from pre-1990 to shut this down
I thought that there was some condition, that those patents couldn’t be used for aggression (or some other antitrust limitation placed on them). So how does this happen now? Or did I remember wrong?
What’s this Grand Theft Patent?
If you can’t compete, sue sue sue… I guess. A great day for lawyers though.
And if you have no sense of ethics you can work for Rockstar (seriously? “Rockstar”?? That’s their name?)
“It would be hard for me to envision that there are high-tech companies out there that don’t use some of the patents in our portfolio.”
Yet another sign the American Empire is collapsing in on itself due to prioritizing Big Corp interests over the interests of society 🙁
Two of the 4 companies use android, Sony and Blackberry (Blackberry has an android compatibility layer built into BB10…during the beta it even ran the google market place….most android functions have been ported)
Strange bedfellows indeed.
Why is it surprising anyone? Sony was part of the consortium.
Plus this gives them a decent one up on the non licensed Android OEMs.
The continuing saga of technological feudalism, another battle for who (of the top globo-corps) will eventually reign supreme.
This is like a case of McDonalds and Wendys wolf-packing together to gain Burger King’s market share, only to later attack each other as well when all their other joint competitors have been litigated into oblivion. Or, to get around the monopoly problem, they create a duopoly like Coke and Pepsi and divide the market equitably from some back room.
It’s really hard to side with anyone other than the little guys here, whom they’ve already effectively eliminated from the equation.
The who-sucks-the-least choices are all that seem to remain.
Consortiums > Cartels > Monopolies/Duopolies.
Now that groklaw has closed down, we need a place that discusses the global legal manouvres and keeps an eye on such things, even if it cannot provide analysis.
(technically, we just need something that allows submissions, approval and story ranking?)
Edited 2013-11-01 20:00 UTC
The man wasn’t kidding. Apple will get it’s revenge.
I am ok with all this fighting. It’s gonna press Washington to fix and hopefully kill off all patents. These things are just a way to cheat the free market. And are basically government granted monopolies.
I don’t get it, why do these companies spend such huge amounts on patents? Google spent 12.5 billion on loss-making Motorola, Apple, Microsoft & others spent 4.5 billion on Nortel patents. HP spent a huge amount on Palm, a large part of that was the patents.
And yet no large lawsuit has come close to a billion dollar payout. Google’s 12.5 billion purchase has yielded them very little in terms of offense or defense against patents.
If you spend 4.5 billion and get 2 billion in licencing fees, is that really a successful strategy? Or are they hoping that injunctions etc. will cause more damage to their competitors. From what I’ve seen, it just seems to require a small feature changed here or there, which barely slows anyone down.
What is the strategy here?
Well, you know what they say about “Military Intelligence”, right? It’s the same for Corporate Intelligence, only then it’s an actual fact.
…Wish I got a dollar for every time someone whined about or used the term `patent troll/trolling`.
Patent trolls don’t produce products based on the patents they hold. Even the most basic of definitions on Wikipedia makes this point. Granted the joint ownership through a third party makes this a grey area.
Even so Apple and Microsoft both manufacture, you know, actual products, whereas Google is a services company.
Add to that Google’s baby Motorola has been suing Apple around the world for the last several years AND refusing to license FRAND patents at FRAND rates.
Google had this coming.
Fact is Qualcomm earns four billion a year from patent licenses and their designs are the source of the processors in nearly every single Android phone.
Google
How does a consortium actually work? Does it have to be a unanimous decision to sue, from all of it’s members, or is Microsoft more of a ringleader?
Apparently Rockstart can act on its own, but it’s not likely they will do things their owners won’t like.