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Motorola To Collect Royalties For Android
tlhIngan writes "It looks like Motorola wants to join in on the Android patent licensing fun enjoyed by Microsoft and others. (Yes, the same Motorola that makes Android phones.) Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha has stated they plan to collect licensing royalties from other Android manufacturers. Given Motorola's involvement in the mobile industry, they certainly do have the portfolio to go with it. It's interesting times ahead for Android."
Google knew fully well what will happen. That's why they don't provide any shield against patents or license them. They took the wise (if slightly evil) route of just giving out as "free" and not mentioning that other companies have patents that affects anyone using Android. Companies stupidly believed the whole free hype and are only now starting to realize that they would actually need to pay something for Android. When you license a mobile OS from other provides, for example from Nokia or Microsoft, all the relevant patents to the OS are included within the deal, the costs are known upfront and it's just simpler. They can only blame themself for not seeing thru the Google marketing.
Google+ vs. Facebook, and why Google+ will fail
Motorola is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) player in the mobile market. Expect the other big players that dont already have cross-licensing deals with Motorola to be begging for such a deal.
.. at least in the phone space.
Android has a strong future, but its no longer "free beer!"
"His name was James Damore."
Theres plenty of souvenirs left over from William & Kates wedding they could collect.
Seems like a win for asian manufacturers to me, as if US based companies don't want to be succesful.
I have an HTC right now but my next phone will be a Samsung, they make great phones for development and are easy to flash with odin or heimdal.
Our wonderful omniscient current production model already has moved manufacturing jobs to South East Asia. Following this strategy of software patents will very soon also move design and innovation abroad. Once it is done all there is left is ownership and royalties. The situation will eclipse as China has grown to be the most powerful nation, which is in 5-10 years.
This is like watching a bacteria culture in a bottle... from inside. Reminds me of the Einstein quote "I know not with what weapons world war 3 will be fought but ww4 will be fought with sticks and stones".
First Microsoft, now Motorola, this turnip is going to be dry soon...
Lets use more appropriate words for the definitions.
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I had the great misfortune of spending a large portion of my life living and doing business under a Communist dictatorship. There was a reason Communism failed; those of us subjected to it hated it! But after reading more and more about how "intellectual property" impacts American businesses, in many ways it makes the Communist system sound better. While we had a lot of bullshit bureaucracy to deal with, it was nevertheless much more efficient than this American nonsense.
When developing a product, we didn't have a larger proportion of the development cost going towards lawyers and IP legalities than we had going to the engineers and manufacturers who actually created the product!
We didn't have products forced out of the marketplace due to licensing problems, depriving consumers of devices that are otherwise safe, useful, and valuable.
We didn't have businesses whose sole purpose was to leech off of the hard work of others by requiring licensing of their "intellectual property". Even the committees and other bureaucratic bullshitters we had to deal with, which in many ways were leeches as well, provided some minimalistic amount of beneficial coordination and consensus-building.
It's no wonder so many Asian countries are wiping the floor with America these days, economically speaking. You Americans have built yourself a "free market" that's extremely stupidly regulated in all of the wrong ways, and extremely inefficient, as well!
All of what I think is based on huge amounts of speculation. But I don't yet see Motorola as an evil company.
The Motorola patents aren't likely to be software patents and I have to wonder if any of them will be. Motorola and mobile phones go way back after all. I think if Motorola strikes deals with other android mobile phone makers which is reasonable and affordable, then it's just fine. It could also prove to be highly defensive of the Android community once they strike deals early on with Android phone namers, they will naturally expand to other phone makers.
(This is where my speculations turn to hopes)
Once Motorola turn to other mobile phone makers, I hope the deals with makers such as Apple include deals which prohibit their actions against Android makers.
As others have pointed out, Apple does NOT want to mess with Motorola. Motorola has been patenting mobile technologies for a LOT longer than Apple has which gives Motorola the upper hand in these kinds of situations.
It starts with a few companies who "only" want to collect $5, or $10, or $35 per Android device. I suppose we can all nod our heads and agree that the mighty should be able to throw their weight around. It feels right. Who cares about the details - we're sure Linux must have stolen something. Otherwise how could it be so great? And so cheap?
But nothing stops the flow of new complaints. Do you know how many software patents there are? How many new applications per day? How many are obvious, trivial, or overly broad? Soon it will be a dozen companies collecting a Linux tax - forget merely on Android - and then it will be 30. A gold rush will ensue - get on the list of people who have to be paid off. Name your own price - the world's high tech giants will have to pay up! But, oh dear. iOS will suddenly have the exact same problem. Do you know how many patents they violate? So will Windows Phone. So will Blackberry. So will those little "learn to read" kiddie computers they sell in Toys R Us. So will everyone.
When it finally becomes more than just a few pariahs and evil actors in the tech industry who try to enforce their patents, it ends with every product having dozens and then hundreds of lawyers showing up to tax them. The only question is, how much economic damage will we do to ourselves before we finally take the obvious step and abolish software patents - which were never even allowed in the first place in Europe, India, and China. This economically pernicious barratry is so obviously stupid that it makes the US an object ridicule abroad.
The tacit policy of allowing software to be patentable reduces competition, stifles innovation, breaks healthy markets, and diverts money to billion-dollar portfolio buys instead of jobs. The only thing it reliably accomplishes is enriching lawyers - the least economically productive activity imaginable.
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By no definition of what constitutes a mobile phone, did Motorola invent the mobile phone as is claimed by the article. They haven't even provided much refinements of pre-existing technology. They introduced the mobile phone to the US market, that's pretty much it. Next somebody claims that Bill Gates invented computers or operating systems.
The early history of mobile phone technology is shrouded in clouds. The Swedish military had mobile/portable phones in the 1930's, but they were likely not alone.
The development and introduction of a mobile phones for non-military use was almost exclusively done by Scandinavian actors. Beginning with the Swedish phones for use in cars and (more important) the technology for city wide mobile phone networks in the late 1940's, and culminating in the NMT system in 1981, that unified the different Scandinavian national network technologies into one, most of it already old and proven technology (the most important inovation of the NMT system, was the idea to dial the phone number and then connect to the phone net, not connect to the phone net and then dial the phone number, as had been done since the first automatic phone systems (also Scandinavian inventions, by the way, the first phones was invented and made by Italians, not Graham Bell (he copied the mechanism of his phone from an article in a paper) or any other US-American, just to set things straight)).
All mobile phone technology that have been invented after that, is just small refinements.
China needs to face some serious issues that are not easily solved before they will rise to "most powerful nation" status.
China is in economic danger because of the threat of social unrest. While they have kept things tight so far, unrest has only been minor. They can't allow hundreds of millions to rise up in protest, and yet the only way to prevent that from happening is to keep giving them more and more of the things they want.
The people demand a better quality of life so the government cannot "simply" keep wages artificially low forever. Keeping pace with the western world, thus maintaining a large wage advantage while still incrementally improving the quality of life is no longer viable, for the western world is sliding backwards now. They must choose between the incremental improvements necessary to prevent unrest and the wage advantage necessary to remain competitive.
My fear is that they will try to maintain the wage advantage and thus eventually have to beat down hundreds of millions.. sparking the largest body count in the history of the world.. making Mao, Stalin, and Hitler look like saints...
"His name was James Damore."
$5 to Microsoft (if you are HTC)
$15 to Microsoft (if you are Samsung)
$20 to Motorola (pure speculation on the $ amount)
Soon it won't be profitable to sell any Android handsets cheaper than an iPhone.
What are they (Motorola) thinking of? Do you ever want to sell another handset or are you transitioning into a patent Troll?
My droid is the last moto phone I will purchase.
There's one simple way to fix that. Apple has so much cash it can afford to buy Motorola. Motorola may be old but it's not exactly swimming in cash. Motorola will be a bargain. Buy the company for the patents and lay off the rest.
Motorola 'may' collect royalties on phones that violate their hardware patents including Android phones. Its not the same thing as collecting royalties for Android or any particular feature of the operating system itself. It still sucks in my opinion but lets get real here this is not about software patents which remain the bulk of the problem with companies like Microsoft, Eolas, Lodsys and Apple. Software is already protected by copyright it should not be stifled with patents. And people on here parroting the notion coined my Microsoft Public Relations such as "Developers should indemnify users" are pathetic trolls. When you claim that developers should 'indemnify' users you are claiming that in order to write software or be a developer you have to have billions of dollars and a massive legal department in order to write code and distribute it. That is a farce notion pioneered and spread throughout the press by Microsoft PR against open source after the SCO fiasco which they funded.
Our wonderful omniscient current production model already has moved manufacturing jobs to South East Asia. Following this strategy of software patents will very soon also move design and innovation abroad. Once it is done all there is left is ownership and royalties. The situation will eclipse as China has grown to be the most powerful nation, which is in 5-10 years.
This is like watching a bacteria culture in a bottle... from inside. Reminds me of the Einstein quote "I know not with what weapons world war 3 will be fought but ww4 will be fought with sticks and stones".
Particularly as it's now Chinese companies that annually apply for the most patents - and mostly they're manufacturing patents not stupidity like "device for transferring voice" "idea for word processor". Ten years ago Nokia and Microsoft shares were a good investment. Not anymore. There's a good reason for that.
This one of several blogs I've seen make this claim the past two days, and I'm honestly still at a loss to explain their assumption. There is nothing in Jha's quote to indicate they are going after other Android makers. The blog linked from the summary says during its Q2 earnings conference call Motorola hinted that it is ready to join Android patent racket, and start demanding licensing fees for its IP from other Android manufacturers.
He based that claim on these comments:
With new entrants in the mobile space, resulting from the convergence of mobility, media, computing and the internet, our patent portfolio is increasingly important...Probably a little less well known is our strength in patent portfolio in non-essential patents, which are capabilities that are important to have in delivering competitive products in the marketplace...As we go forward, I think that the introduction of number of players with large revenues, which have come into the marketplace as a result of the convergence of the mobility, computing, internet and other segments, I think that that creates an opportunity for us to monetize and maximize the shareholder value in a number of different ways and we evaluate all of them all the time.
From that, the blogger now knows that Motorola plans to collect $60 per handset from HTC and Samsung. Or so he says. Now, he's made a new post, using a new quote from Jha to cement his position. He claims that this week Motorola’s CEO Sanjay Jha reiterated this message, and made it even more clear – they do indeed have plans to start collecting IP royalties from other Android makers. What did Jha say that so clearly showed Motorola's plans to sue their Android brethren?
I would bring up IP as a very important for differentiation (among Android vendors). We have a very large IP portfolio, and I think in the long term, as things settle down, you will see a meaningful difference in positions of many different Android players. Both, in terms of avoidance of royalties, as well as potentially being able to collect royalties. And that will make a big difference to people who have very strong IP positions.
That seems more likely (to me) to say that Motorola is not HTC and will not be paying Microsoft blackmail money. In fact, they may be able to extract their own pound of flesh from Microsoft and Apple. What in that passage gives any hint that Motorola will be pursuing other Android manufacturers? I'm at a loss.
Apple is selling iPads as fast as they can make them. Xoom and Galaxy aren't anywhere close to denting their sales.
IMO, there are quite a few good reasons to give Apple grief over their Motorola and Samsung lawsuits. But that the allegation that Apple is motivated to bring these suits forward because their products are not able to compete on their own merits in the marketplace is not one of them.
Now, were Apple going after Palm over Newton patents a decade ago, I think you might be able to make such a case. But that allegation over the iPad is just goofy.
If Motorola is targeting Android manufacturers that implies that it is something about Android that is infringing Motorola's patents. Since Android only consists of software, the patents it is infringing by definition must be software patents.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Motorola makes Android phones so the prices of their competitors will go up and since Motorola owns the patents they don't have to pay anything extra. At that point Motorola could either keep the prices of their Android phones low to undercut the competition or keep the prices in line with everyone else and take in the extra money as profit.
Soon it won't be profitable to sell any Android handsets cheaper than an iPhone.
What are they (Motorola) thinking of? Do you ever want to sell another handset or are you transitioning into a patent Troll?
Actually, I think most of the mobile phone industry is in a similar position.
They're trying desperately to avoid phone handsets becoming a commodity. Historically, this has been fairly easy because every manufacturer had their strengths and their weaknesses. Software was often a weakness, hence why they frequently bring it in from outside (cf. Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian).
The problem with Android is that it's a game changer. Already we see companies that produce mobile phones have stepped up their development pace pretty drastically - once a few Chinese companies start punting reference designs the amount of work for any old fred to enter the phone industry is drastically reduced. This is going to hammer the profit-per-phone - and when you've got a $multi-billion global company, you can't really restructure it to account for such a sea change.
So you don't. You look for a way to stop Android from being such a destructive technology - and that's what we're seeing Motorola do. Make no mistake, they won't be the last.
Lawyers love this sort of thing. You and I aren't allowed to argue the case and settle it between us. Instead, if we are to challenge any of this nonsense, we have to participate in a complex ritual the rules of which are only known to the initiated (lawyers and judges).
It has nothing to do with common sense and everything to do with a group of people with a vested interest in keeping things complex which are not naturally complex.
The very notion of intellectual property is too absurd; an invention of a twisted mind; a long shot which worked out for the lawyer who dreamt it up. He and those who followed behind must be laughing their heads off.
China uses the same tactics as the US did during the cold war. The tell their people how corrupt and evil everyone else is and the only way to be 'pure' is to give up as much as they can to the government. As long as they keep the west as the big bad wolf they will keep their people in line. Oh wait that's the same thing that's happening to us!
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
I always thought motorola android was the worst and overpriced bunch. Since they can't win market share, I guess they are going down the apple and microsoft road and sue instead of innovate. More reason not to buy motorola items.
Since you haven't actually invented anything, it's easy for you to say that patents are crap.
However, for the people involved, they may have actually put a lot of hard work, thought, and know-how into what the patent covers. Things that are obvious today aren't obvious when you're the first mover in the space.
Mechanical patents can seem just as ridiculous as software patents, if you bother to read them. Does the patent regime make sense?
Let's put it this way: if you were going to spend a few hundred million of your own dollars, wouldn't you want some protection against some yahoo coming along, copying your work, and selling it for less?
What if Motorola charge Google $0.02 per android to cover licence infringement.
Google then charge Motorola $0.02 for every mobile with android sold
on paper Both are getting large royalties from each other but in reality it zero's out.
(*note* figures are examples only and not representative of any financial calculations, but you get the idea.)
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
I can see Microsoft negotiating something like this with Motorola since the reason for Microsoft to sue Motorola over Android is not for the revenue but to knock Android out of the market. They have no control over the mobile device application development market at this time.
Wait, what? This did *not* origin with Florian?
Sure, then how about spelling them appropriately too?
Carol vs. Ghost
I think Google should just take down their Android site and stop supporting it. It was a failed experiment due to this patent fiasco. Hopefully they learned a lesson and next time they'll stock up on a tight portfolio of patents before heading into a new field.
Also, they should pull the rug out from under Motorola and tell them they violated some section of the license, which I'm sure they have by now e.g. their FUSE system that not only prevents users from modding their phone but destroys their phone as well. Get an injunction against them, and force Motorola to go back to selling their own OS and not an Android based one.
To attack the OS that made them successful with their own patents not only makes it apparent the scum that they are but also that they're undeserving of the technology itself. Little brats. I'll never buy a Microsoft or Motorola phone ever again, that's for sure.
Not really.
1980 patent: do something
1990 patent: do something via the internet.
2000 patent: do something on a mobile device.
[...]
2525 patent: do something on a different planet
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Unlike most "can't compete, litigate", assertions made here, this one is pretty true. Motorola can't make a phone that doesn't fall to pieces after six months, so they're obviously trying to make money off everyone's successes. At the start of 2010, they were without a hope in the world, and were looking at leaving the cellphone market entirely, or going under; their massive hit Android phones, the Dext/Cliq, Backflip, Droid/Milestone, basically let them claw their way back up from the depths. I didn't sell a single Motorola last year that didn't have to be sent away multiple times on warranty jobs; I was lucky in that my Backflip held out a month or so longer than others before the hinge mechanism started disconnecting the screen, probably just because I use my phone less.
Cue the dozen replies saying people have never had trouble with their fifteen year old Motorola. I'm sure their old phones are fine, but nothing made in the past seven or so years lasts more than six months.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
I can't wait for Patent World War One to start. Not one corporation with money will be left standing. According to current US patent law, the best defense, and in some situations perhaps the only option, is the "I don't have any money". One question though, is how much Linux is involved here.
Motorola in android case is like "Trojan Horse" for the Greeks ;)
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)
And thanks you for the hint ;=)
This articles seems a little irrelevant now that Google is going to buy Motorola. :)
Eaten by the Bigger Fish ...