Haha OK your theory is they bid 3.14 billion for these patents to avoid lawyer fees?
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Apple/Microsoft 'Rockstar Consortium' Sues Google, Others Over Nortel Patents
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Haha OK your theory is they bid 3.14 billion for these patents to avoid lawyer fees?
no it would be more to use them to force Apple to back off and not have to worry about being sued into the ground. The fact that they went straight to court should speak volumes. Lets face it Apple/Microsoft has zero interested in settling. Their goal is to cripple android plan and simple.
Lets face it those who can not innovated litigate. Seems to be the only thing Apple can do anymore.
I am also interested to hear the answer to this question...
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Maybe because the size of the players...
maybe but look at Apple history. Apple has become the worlds largest patent troll sueing with crappent like slide to unlock. They are pretty much suing and seeing what sticks. MS has started doing the same. Apple is running scared from Android and has been for a while. iOS has been playing catch up for a few years now.
But lets look at history. Apple has been sue happy. Google has not been sue happy. Even motorolla lawsuit with Apple was Moto defense as they got word apple was planning on suing and Moto wanted to control the court it was done in. Companies that got the patents have a history of being sue happy.
I think you are slowly figuring this out.
Companies who don't have the patents and use the technology anyway have a history of being sued.I think you are slowly figuring this out.
No, I think you are missing the point that Apple has become the worlds largest patent troll sueing with crappents like slide to unlock. I am very glad they got that one tossed out.
You need to look at history of the companies. Google has patents but does not go sue happy and acting like a patent troll. Apple on the other had does sue and act like a patent troll. MS is becoming more troll like but pail in comparison to Apple.
SJ quoted he was willing to pull the trigger on MAD and go sue happy. Apple started the sue happy crap. Only winners in all this are the lawyers rest of us are the losers no matter the out come.
Here's what really happened: Two groups were bidding for these patents. How do you think did they decide how much to bid? Each group knew that if they win, they have to pay x$ for the patents. They estimated that they then could go to court and get y$ in license fees. They also estimated that if they didn't win, they would be taken to court themselves and lose z$ in license fees. So how much do you bid? You bid y$ + z$. So they must have thought that by paying $4.5bn they will earn about $2 1/4 bn instead of losing $2 1/4 bn.
If the Rockstar consortium had lost the bid, Google would be taking them to court right now.
I thought it was Samsung who was threatened with a $13 billion fine for using patents to stifle competition in Europe.
Your post almost comes across as trying to claim Apple/MS/etc are NOT using them as a weapon.
They are patent trolling - that much is obvious. They saw a patent that would massively impact Google (showing adverts along side search results) and are now going to use that as leverage.
They're all as bad as each other - don't try painting Apple as the saviour and Google as the big bad wolf, as in reality they are all *******s when it comes to this kind of thing.
Basically, they overbid.
The auction atmosphere (and Google) drove the price up to many times more than observers had thought the patents were worth. So, instead of an investment that could pay for itself, the patents have became an expense.
Nortel had already sold off many of the more valuable patents.
Many of the LTE related ones are SEP and came with FRAND restrictions. (The DOJ made all bidders promise to keep the same rates if they won.)
Interestingly, of the 6,000 patents Rockstar got, apparently only about 2,000 were still in force, and only half of those (1,000) had at least ten years of life left.
Originally it was assumed that any high bidder would be using them only for defensive purposes, and would be paying a lot simply to keep them out of patent troll hands. However, it looks like the cost got too high to sit back and do nothing with them.
Indeed. Many of these are "standards-essential" so any payouts will be capped, and of the rest, if history is any guide we can expect some to be tossed, some found valid but not infringed, leaving only a subset as potentially enforceable.
Anyone willing to take a bet that this consortium never earns back in penalties more than half the money they paid for these patents?
Exactly! I'm tired of companies not using patents and simply using them to make it harder for other companies to develop products.
You are right of course, one should not get a patent for asking questions.
But what if you never heard the question? How could you peddle your cat food?
Solution: Invent a super sensitive microphone, that filters out all the noise except "cat', then locates the person who uttered it and tells you whom to send your cat food offers to.
Most important, don't forget to patent this super duper microphone unless you want to be a penniless cat food peddler forever.
It's funny you paint Google in such a benevolent, well-intentioned light given that it's Google/Motorola, and its manufacturing partner Samsung that haven been the target of an antitrust investigation directly related to patent litigation.
Let's say Google had used those patents for "defensive purposes." What that would amount to is Google using standards-essential patents, i.e. patents that are deemed "ESSENTIAL" to implementing an officially adopted industry standard technology in order to fend of lawsuits over infringements of other companies NON-ESSENTIAL patents, i.e. patented technologies for which companies invested significant amounts of R&D.
Again, call Apple and Microsoft the "world's largest patent trolls" but Apple has yet to be the target of a government investigation for patent abuse while Google and its manufacturing partners have been investigated.
Two things.
First, the creation of a patent troll company backed by big names.
The Apple-Microsoft led group (Rockstar Bidco) that bought a bunch of Nortel patents, has created a company called the Rockstar Consortium (hereafter called just Rockstar).
All the ex-Nortel patents were assigned to Rockstar, which has no products of its own. That means it can sue others without worrying about patent infringement countersuits. In other words, as Wired noted, it's what is known as a classic patent troll.
Rockstar itself has created two subsidiaries: Mobilestar and Netstar, concentrating on mobile and internet patents.
Rockstar employs engineers who do nothing but reverse-engineer software from other companies, looking for possible infringements. (Remember, no copying need be involved... and none usually is. Just coincidentally coming up with the same implementation is enough for infringement. This is what is bad about software patents: it's easy to come up with the same solution for a given problem.)
Second, the patents in this lawsuit are about search.
In particular, the patents are about using databases to correlate search results with the correct ad to display.
That pretty much strikes at the heart of Google's purpose in life, so no doubt there'll be attempts at showing prior art and obviousness, etc.
Of note: the patents are related and even though many have publication dates around 2010, they seem to point back to a patent with a priority date of 1997. I'm not sure about this, but that seems to indicate that they'll all expire in 2017. If so, they need to be used quickly. Any patent attorneys here?
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Well said, I was going to post the same comment, but you cover it perfectly. Patents shouldn't be weapons that you can just buy and sell.
In all fairness, Samsung is also a partner of Apple; even this week Apple brought Samsung on board to make screens for the iPad when their other manufacturer failed to meet yields. In fact, Apple is one of Samsung's biggest customers, buying far more from them than Google or anyone else but Sony.
But more relevant here is that Google is not alone in getting the attention of antitrust investigators:
Apple hit with U.S. injunction in e-books antitrust case
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/06/us-apple-ebooks-idUSBRE9850MD20130906
None of these companies, not Apple nor Google nor any of them, are either angels or the devil. They're just companies trying to maximize their position, and each of them makes mistakes along the way, sometimes even breaking the law.
This has been commented on to death, and justifiably so. I would just like to add that Nortel>Northern Telecom>Northern Electric has never been an "energy company".
"Licensing it to someone else" is the purpose of Patent Assertion Entities, a/k/a trolls. Suing someone when they are legitimately violating a legitimate patent is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The problem is not lawsuit per se, it is frivolous lawsuits that are intended to harass, cause needless, and obtain large out-of-court settlements as a way to avoid the greater expense.
The direct solution would be to change the law so that if a plaintiff loses, it would be forced to pay some or all of the defendant's expenses. That way, most lawsuits would take place only if the plaintiff actually believed it could win in court.
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According to my American History class, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. This removed seeds from cotton via mechanical means. Before this invention, these seeds were removed perfectly well by hand, by slaves. Are you saying old Eli should not have received a patent?
By the way, anyone interested in the history of patent enforcement should look read up on the full story of the cotton gin.
I guarantee that it took a lot more R&D time and money to come up with GSM/CDMA/LTE standards than it did to come up with slide-to-unlock etc.
Anti-trust investigations are not uncommon. Look at the ones Apple has recently been through for eBooks, EU carrier contracts, and anti-poaching deals.
As for patents, everyone involved in the Nortel purchase, Apple included, was investigated for a possible anti-trust violation.
That was an investigation as to whether the patents were being bought only to use as weapons.
The other investigations you're talking about are over the debate as to what kind of negotiations (or lack of) constitute cause for an injunction over a SEP. The end result, in the US at least, is that the DOJ is finally setting out time limits for negotiations and arbitration, after which an injunction is possible.
If neither Google nor Apple is an angel nor a devil, why are people making it look like Google is the angel and Apple is the devil?
Also, I was talking about getting the attention of antitrust investigators regarding patents. In spite of all the patent lawsuits, Apple has never been investigated for abusive patent litigation practices.
Again, I really don't think this one is about the patents. I think this is a message to Google and others to say, "hey, this sort of thing can easily be avoided if you'd just stop acting like such a little ******* all the time."
I get that a lot of people have different opinions about patents and I get why. I can see both sides of the coin in a lot of cases, and I think all can agree that patent law reform is necessary on some level. But if you look at this specific situation in the broadest context, I think it's clear that Apple and others want to send a broader message as opposed to just winning a patent suit for the sake of licensing fees and upholding the patents.
Again, can't say it enough, this could have easily been avoided if Google had played balls with the others, but they wanted to go at it alone, and we all know full well who'd be on the other side of this lawsuit if that happened. The only difference is that Google made a choice to go it alone, in what can only be considered an aggressive stance, and the others felt the need to defend themselves against Google. In filing this lawsuit, I still think they're simply defending themselves against Google's rather shameless practices.
I get that a lot of people have different opinions about patents and I get why. I can see both sides of the coin in a lot of cases, and I think all can agree that patent law reform is necessary on some level. But if you look at this specific situation in the broadest context, I think it's clear that Apple and others want to send a broader message as opposed to just winning a patent suit for the sake of licensing fees and upholding the patents.
Again, can't say it enough, this could have easily been avoided if Google had played balls with the others, but they wanted to go at it alone, and we all know full well who'd be on the other side of this lawsuit if that happened. The only difference is that Google made a choice to go it alone, in what can only be considered an aggressive stance, and the others felt the need to defend themselves against Google. In filing this lawsuit, I still think they're simply defending themselves against Google's rather shameless practices.