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Visual Depiction of Who Is Suing Who in Mobile

Although the graphic itself won't win an award for design, Norman submitted a story about who's suing who in the mobile universe. From Apple to Qualcomm and pretty much everyone in between, it's a pretty impressive mess.

17 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. The Lawyers win by Jackie_Chan_Fan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You should see the homes of some of these guys...

  2. ... who is suing whom ... by mkawick · · Score: 3, Funny

    Just saying

  3. All this money and time by devent · · Score: 3, Insightful

    All this money and time wasted in the courts could be used to make better products and improve innovation. How are patents are suppose to promote the progress of useful arts again? We should just change the text to "to promote the progress of lawyers".

    --
    http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
  4. Microsoft.. by Quantus347 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How is it that nobody is suing Microsoft? I mean...its Microsoft: Digital Evil since 1985. They've constantly been in one form of litigation or another for decades.

    --
    Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
    1. Re:Microsoft.. by Caerdwyn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Microsoft doesn't have anything anybody wants to emulate.

      --
      Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
    2. Re:Microsoft.. by dattaway · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Microsoft isn't delivering a product, so they can't be sued.

    3. Re:Microsoft.. by Rockoon · · Score: 3, Informative

      Because Microsofts patent portfolio is so large and varied that its preferable to enter into a cross licensing deal.

      The end result is that most companies *do* cross license with Microsoft without the muss and fuss of a legal battle, because by all rights Microsoft does have some patents of value that you want.

      A non-comprehensive list of companies that Microsoft has cross-licensing deal with:

      Alpine, Amazon, Apple, Autodesk, Centrify, Denso, Epson, Fuji, Funai, HP, JVC, Kenwood, Lexmark, LG, Lotus, Nikon, Olympus, Onkyo, Panasonic, Pioneer, Samsung, TomTom, Toshiba, and Xerox.

      ..thats just the short list of companies I found in the first few pages of a google search.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
  5. Re:Size? by Dogers · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And even better if they sorted it out so that the arrows didn't overlap..

    Why on earth does the Oracle-Google arrow overlap with the Nokia-Toshiba one? Specifically added confusion, that's why.

    --
    I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
  6. Re:Size? by duranaki · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Also I'd like to see some dotted lines to connect companies with cross-patent licensing agreements. For instance I know Kodak and Nokia have them, which is why Kodak is suing Apple and not Nokia.

  7. The Era of Stupid Computing by Microlith · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Can you imagine if what is going on now in the mobile space had been happening as personal computing took off during the 80s? We'd have gotten just short of nowhere, what with all the patent suits crippling things and walled garden lock down forcing people to find exploits so they can regain basic levels of control.

    I can't help that this piss poor, anti-user behavior in the mobile market is going to ripple up into the general computing space in the next few years and generally make life hell for anyone who shows an interest in computers beyond Facebook, e-mail and the latest console game.

  8. If You Stare at the Diagram... by D+Ninja · · Score: 4, Funny

    If you stare at that diagram long enough, you can see a whole bunch of lawyers swimming in piles of cash ala Scrooge McDuck. (If you're having trouble, it helps if you cross your eyes a little bit and back away slowly.)

  9. Re:Size? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Well, considering that Qualcomm is underlined for misspelling in the graph, I don't the author was particularly concerned with spending time on polish.

  10. Re:Size? by clone53421 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As a matter of fact, I did just that. Theirs is a hopeless mess of spaghetti.

    http://ompldr.org/vNXFndg/lawsuitmap.gif

    --
    Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
  11. Re:Hey Microsoft by maxume · · Score: 3, Informative

    Microsoft does, on an annual basis:

    http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar09/10k_fr_dis.html

    If you read through a bit, you will see that they currently incur legal expenses of about $500 million a year and spend about $9 billion a year on R&D.

    (Of course, those legal expenses include settlements...)

    --
    Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
  12. Re:Hey Microsoft by Locutus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    no other company has 'touched' me so much as they have over the past 25 years so yes, they and their tactics always get my attention.

    And as far as everyone else goes, these kinds of things have been going on for years but it is Microsoft who continues to do the most damage to competition. The others tend to figure out how to work thing out without initially destroying each other. Microsoft's business methods and practices are always based on protectionism as opposed to competition and their market position makes them the largest threat in the ring. They've lost 10s of billions on the Windows CE based productline yet it still exists. As with Internet Explorer they effectively pay vendors to ship their products until the competition has lost enough income they are easy pickings. That makes them the elephant in the room.

    As for it being knee-jerk well if it were a demolition derby, when a competitor shows up in a armored tank, who but the blind isn't going to point that out?

    LoB

    --
    "Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
  13. Does that diagram look familiar? by doronbc · · Score: 3, Informative

    Probably because we've seen something similar to it before. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/an-explosion-of-mobile-patent-lawsuits/

  14. Re:Size? by clone53421 · · Score: 3, Funny

    *blushes*

    MS Word

    --
    Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.