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Motorola Sues Apple
rexjoec writes "Just a week after Motorola Inc. (MOT) itself became the target of legal action by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), it sued Apple Inc. (AAPL) for the alleged infringement of 18 of its patents. Motorola subsidiary, Motorola Mobility Inc. also filed patent suits against Apple in federal court in Illinois and Florida."
This is great! If this madness continues, companies will spend 90% of their revenue filing or defending dozens of lawsuits, get nothing done anymore, and will clamor at the doors of congress to save them from the patent madness they once thought to be such a great idea.
Or maybe we're all doomed.
--Udo.
It's like the Mutually-Assured-Destruction scenario in the mobile/wireless world!
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
Is this really sustainable for the industry? It seems like every mobile company has patents that every other mobile company is either stepping on or tiptoeing around. I have to think that by this time next year all the major companies involved will have set up a meeting somewhere and agreed to cross license with each other. All these patent suits are just wrangling for a better position in the agreement that they all know is coming eventually. Of course, such an agreement would make it next to impossible for any new companies to enter the market, which I'm sure none of the current manufacturers would be sad about.
A diagram in the Guardian from last week nicely illustrates the insanity that is the mobile phone litigation business. With the vortex of lawsuits surrounding both hardware and software, it's amazing that anybody is able to innovate at all.
It's pretty hard to keep the graph up-to-date.
Regarding the unfolding mess, here's what info I've gathered:
And if someone wants to get an article started on this new lawsuit, go ahead:
Motorola_v._Apple_(2010,_USA)
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I think we're seeing something different here. Company A gets sued by Company B, because B wants a revenue stream from a stupid patent (especially since it's rather obvious that B is struggling in the mobile market pretty badly). Company A, also struggling, doesn't want to have to pay for the eventual licensing out of its own funds, so it sues Company C to get a revenue stream that it will in turn use to pay B with (and maybe get a bit of extra besides). Eventually everyone is suing everyone else to, well, pay everyone else.
It all looks good on paper, though, and it'll confuse the hell out of shareholders enough to make them look profitable.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Getting sued by other major cellphone makers for patent infrigment.
Dumped into third place in sales by Google and Android.
Defective hardware - botched antenna design, wonky proximity sensor, and glass casing problems.
iOS woefully behind Android in features and ease of use.
And Apple has stopped giving out their iPad sales numbers updates.
At least they are doing better than Microsoft's colossal failure with the dead Kin and Windows Phone 7 OSes.
These patents are absurd. We've debated the frivolousness of many patents here for a while, but a patent for "Receiver having concealed external antenna" is just laughable. It makes me wonder if there is a patent for have an non-concealed antenna.
The transition from Motorola to Intel processors decided in 2005 by Apple may be another reason that encouraged Motorola to take legal action later on, when they could.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The transition from Motorola to Intel processors decided in 2005 by Apple
...happened after Motorola had already spun off its semiconductor division as Freescale in 2004.
Motorola was out of the picture by the time IBM had secured all three console's for its PPC/Cell chips and they dumped Apple as a customer.
This case certainly has nothing to do with that ancient history.
MS: You know, we could "misplace" the lawsuit MS has going against you.
Motorola: That would be great, but what would we have to do?
MS: Nothing much, just mess with Apple a bit. We could do it ourselves but it would attract the kind of attention we don't want right now.
First thing that when through my mind when I read the headline.
The "whole point of patents" was to enable someone to come up with an idea and have a brief exclusivity period so that they could get the idea to market.
The whole premise of patents was that it ACTUALLY TOOK time to get ideas to market, and that an average person COULD GET THEM TO MARKET. Thus they would encourage INNOVATION by allowing small players a way to compete with already entrenched players, via innovation.
Patents were not created so that giant mega-corporations could use them to gain further market share, they were SUPPOSED to be there for the little guy.
The "whole point of patents" is totally meaningless in today's business world. Patents do not serve to encourage innovation, the limit it, because everyone and every company who has an idea has to spend enormous amounts of money just to see if their idea is already patented, and the only ones who can really afford it are the players who are already entrenched. It is not just software and IP patents that have this problem either. With facilities like mini-fabs and Alibaba.com, anyone who has an idea for a product can have it prototyped and have mini runs done of it overseas for very minimal cost. For many inventions It actually will cost more for you to get your patent investigated and filed, than it will for you to make your first 10,000 units and start selling them. How is this supposed to encourage rapid innovation again?
Suing is how you say "hello" in the cell phone business.
Well at least somebody wins... (the lawyers)
Banks and lawyers. Two totally unnecessary services getting the most money from everything for nothing?! Great! :D
Let's not forget the roles of the paralegals, court reporters, bailiffs, court clerks, gavel carpenters and those pretentious robe designers! They're benefitting as much as anyone in this litigious patent machinery.
The Admin and the Engineer