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."

Comments

Just great!!

[udoschuermann]

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.

Re:Just great!!

[WrongSizeGlass]

In the end we'll all pay more for phones because these companies can't learn to get along. Who knows, they may each have patents for the same things issued by the infallible USPTO.

Sustainable?

[MozeeToby]

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.

Re:Sustainable?

[TheRaven64]

It seems like every mobile company has patents that every other mobile company is either stepping on or tiptoeing around

Nope, most companies have cross-licensing agreements. Apple is in trouble because they didn't bother to set these up when they entered the market. Nokia fired first and now everyone else in the same position has decided that they can get some money from Apple, or force them out of the market.

No matter who loses, the lawyers win

[macwhizkid]

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.

Patent wars

[vagabond_gr]

It's pretty hard to keep the graph up-to-date.

Business as usual...

[Penguinisto]

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.

Laughable

[Moby Cock]

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.

Re:Laughable

[gad_zuki!]

Except prior art of on internal antenna is at least 40 years. Its not an innovation. Its an EXISTING AND KNOWN feature but crammed in legalese and put in conditions like "cell based receivers" so that the patent passes without adding any innovation to the world. Its your typical "narrow enough to pass but broad enough to do damage" patent that these companies specialize in for the sake of litigious action against competitors.

The USPO's take on this is that the courts will work it out. Thanks guys for letting any patent go through and letting me, the end user of these phones, pay extra for all the laywering.

Re:Cellphone Market Turning Ugly For Apple

[RingBus]

Apple still has an army of fans in the media who will proclaim every new product as 'innovative' and 'amazing' regardless of the actually quality which will help less the blow of Android dominance. However there is now an air of acceptance from Apple fans that the iPhone is on its way to a Mac like marketshare and quite a bit of revisionist history of "Apple never wanted to dominate the cellphone market" rationalizing going on.

Re:Armageddon!

[Carewolf]

No, it seems destruction is not assured, so it is not MAD, unfortunately it appears to be MAX - Mutually Assued Crosslicensing :(

Re:Armageddon!

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Oh, if only this were true. If only Patentgeddon were finally here, and Mutual Destruction was truly Assured. If only the big players would unleash their full arsenals on each other, in wave after thoughtless paroxysm of retaliations, until the silos were all exhausted and the landscape were littered with piles of the bodies of slain lawyers. Perhaps then, the starving, horribly disfigured mutants who were never part of the original conflict, yet somehow managed to miraculously, accidentally survive, could try to eke out a peaceful subsistence living, at long last free of the Shadow of Mordor.

Or something like that.

In an off the record meeting ...

[PinkyGigglebrain]

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.

Re:Cellphone Market Turning Ugly For Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also an army of anti-Apple people who will up-mod anything tearing Apple apart. It's like a car with most of its weight at the front and back ends -- most of the time it balances out, but it does tend to go into a ditch a fair amount.

Does anyone still care about this?

[Arancaytar]

Suing is how you say "hello" in the cell phone business.