A long time ago in a "Galaxy Tab" far, far away...
Well, maybe not that far away… There is a global war going on, literally billions are being spent and the casualties are heavy to capture real estate across the globe. You say yes, yes, I know... Do you? I don’t mean Afghanistan, or Iraq, I mean in the corporate mobile nations, Apple, Samsung, Motorola, etc. The Clone Wars, where, companies are arguing over the technology that these "Clone" smartphones and tablets are made of, in short, claimjumping ( i.e., patents.) on the Goldmine we know as the mobile market.
The U.S. Department of Justice today green lighted Google and Motorola to “jump the broom” after concluding that the merger would not adversely impact competition in the wireless market. In addition, the DOJ today also gave Microsoft, Apple and Research in Motion the go-ahead to buy up patents formerly held by Nortel. Those three companies last year formed an industry consortium that bid a total of $4.5 billion for the Nortel patents, thus keeping them out of Google’s hands. Google had bid a total of $900 million for the rights to the Nortel patents. In all, the Nortel portfolio contains more than 6,000 patents that cover technologies such as 4G wireless, data networking and voice.
Why would Microsoft and Apple join hands and go to such lengths? Apple, Microsoft and other big tech companies have been suing manufacturers that create and sell devices based on Google's Android operating system for alleged patent infringement since 2010. Apple fired the first shot by filing a lawsuit against HTC for allegedly infringing on 20 Apple patents in March 2010 and Microsoft launched its salvos when it had reached a licensing agreement with HTC where the company would pay Microsoft royalties in exchange for the right to sell Android-based devices.
Mobile-handset-related lawsuits are up 25 percent yearly since 2006, according to Lex Machina, an intellectual property litigation firm. Blame for the uptick in legal battles lies with the technology land grab involving mobile companies eager to get a slice of the billions of dollars at stake in the fast-growing mobile arena.
Now they aren’t suing Google outright, not to “wake the baby”, but they are attacking the Android proxies instead.
To combat these patent suits against Android vendors, Google has attempted to boost its own patent portfolio through both its failed bid to acquire valuable tech patents formerly held by Nortel and its announcement that it intends to pay $12.5 billion to acquire Motorola Mobility and its portfolio of 24,500 patents.
Additionally, Apple proposed to buy 882 Novell patents from CPTN Holdings, a partnership including Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and EMC. Apple's acquisition of Novell patents may surprise those that are fans of the open-source community because Novell had committed to providing the patents with royalty-free licenses for use in Linux; however, this is not Apple’s MO.
And the battle moves on…
Gawker’s info graphic (the ball of lawsuits shown) shows how many companies are involved in this ridiculous lawsuit-fest. Many industry observers see the fight between Apple and HTC as a prelude to a larger battle between Apple and Google. The late Steve Jobs famously called the Android OS a rip-off of the iPhone.For three top mobile phone manufacturers on the frontlines, Apple, Samsung and Motorola have taken each other to court in a number of combinations as they each try to block, or at the very least, stall their competitors from bringing products into the market that compete directly with theirs.
The latest intel from “the Front”
A German court has ruled in favor of Samsung in a case where Apple had sued Samsung to have their Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 device banned from sale in Germany and Europe at large. The Europe-wide ban request was squashed initially but the court did uphold Apple’s complaint against the Galaxy Tab 10.1. However, allowed Samsung to sell a different version of the Galaxy Tab 10.1, the Galaxy Tab 10.1N in the German market because it is, in the view of the court, significantly different from the Apple iPad.
In a separate filling, Apple has lodged a case in a California court seeking to block the sale of the Galaxy Nexus in the US. The case targets the device that runs Google’s Ice cream Sandwich operating system and which Apple says has numerous patent infringements. Similarly, a recent ruling that effectively banned the sale of HTCphones in the US but that which HTC circumvented through a software update. Apple has also gone after Samsung for two patent infringements related to the auto correct function in Samsung Smartphone, among other patent infringements.
Apple has however not gone unscathed as they were recently in court on the receiving end of a patent suit filed by Motorola. The case has however been thrown out of court.
As the clone wars heat up, there seems to be no clear end in sight as all companies file for more and more patents for features that are increasingly bordering on plain ridiculous. Unless the US Patent Office finds, a way of stepping on these shenanigans, casualties will rise. Casualties, you say? Yes, you the consumer, will see less and less innovation and more and more intervention.
In the end, who will be the winning nation? Stagnation.
Source(s):
So “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;”
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About Rick Ricker
An IT professional with over 20 years experience in Information Security, wireless broadband, network and Infrastructure design, development, and support.
For more information, contact Rick at (800) 333-8394 x 689
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