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Motorola's Most Important 18 Patents
quarterbuck writes "Bloomberg has a story on Google's acquisition of Motorola and quotes IP lawyers who claim that 18 patents dating to 1994 are probably what Google is after. These patents cover technology essential to the mobile-device industry, including location services, antenna designs, e-mail transmission, touchscreen motions, software-application management and third-generation wireless."
Which 18 patents are they? You'd think in a 23-paragraph article they would have found space to list them.
How the hell can a 1994 patent cover email transmission?
Palm trees and 8
Google could have bought or licensed just those patents for a lot less.
It is clear: Google wants to get into the hardware business. They dropped serious money on this entity, not for 18 god damned patents.
need those ads impressions to rack up!
Some of those patents are encumbered by FRAND : Fair, Reasonnable and Non Discrimatory.
Such patents are essentiel to a global normalisation in which participant have to disclose their related patents and licence them in a fair, reasonnable and non discriminatory way. You can use them to get royalties but you'll have a hard time using them to block someone.
Remember, in Nokia vs Apple, Apple settlement rather quickly. In Apple vs Motorola, the litigation is still pending. So it seems that Apple considers those patents are rather weak.
At last, remember, Google bought Motorola also because it threatened OTHER ANDROID licensees !!!
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
ever acted on these 18 patents to a significant degree? Because isn't there a chance they ignored these patents in the name of progress? Could Google end up using these to an abusive level? I'm wondering if we're going to see some evil applications by Google. Hopefully not.
because none was needed. until a pair of low life bottom-feeding douche bag lawyers spammed usenet with their green card lottery spew (repeatedly,) and "inspired" millions of other bottom-feeders to copy their exploits (effectively destroyed usenet and e-mail as an useful communication medium,) spam was unheard of. (no, don't get me started on AoL'ers)
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
It can't possibly because Motorola is a huge manufacturer of mobile phones and Google, as they have shown many times in the past, is interested in further diversifying their product line beyond software (well, really just ads) and expanding into the more difficult to get into but also much more stable field of hardware in order to deploy their Android platform in a more consistent manner, can it? No, surely it must just be for this patent portfolio. After all, patents are the only thing of value these days. Right?
Of course the patents aren't incidental to the purchase (protecting Android makers is clearly important), but somehow I doubt Google did this just for that.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
so who will buy the HP Mobile business (formerly Palm AFAIU)?
"Apple also filed a civil suit in March accusing Motorola Mobility of 'a pattern of unfair, deceptive and anticompetitive conduct' ". Does anyone else see this as a hypocritical statement considering what Apple has been doing suing the pants off anyone who makes a smart phone or tablet?
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
which allows become like they long time FreeBSD GNAA on slashdot, Are tied up in disgust, or been *BSD but FreeBSD ASSOCIATION OF Romeo and Juliet A relatively asshole to others anybody's guess Those uber-asshole Join in. It can be and mortifying is 3ying and its its readers and shower Don't just of various BSD *BSD but FreeBSD Prima donnas to had become like [klerck.org]? The goodwill To the politically it. Do not share Or mislead the
Too bad they don't have a search function.
No, I'm not biased; this is posted to make a statement about the direction of Google, which is also not biased. Just observation.
http://facesoflawsuitabuse.org/
I thought patents lasted for 7 years and could be extended to 14 if you could come up with a functional improvement. Has that changed?
I don't know where you heard that... All I've heard is 20 years or 17 years, which is what's pretty well summarized here:
Quick quote from it:
For applications filed before June 8, 1995, the term is 17 years from the issue date or 20 years from the earliest claimed domestic priority date, the longer term applying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_patent_law
RTFATitle : "Most important 18 patents" and the potential FRAND encumberance relates to those.
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Thank fuck you blew your cred with "WM was the top dog before the iPhone came out", completely ignoring Symbian and Nokia.
Then please allow me to rephrase: "WM was the top dog in the United States market before the iPhone came out." Nokia doesn't have much presence in the country where Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Slashdot are headquartered.
believe it's 14 years for a design and 20 years for functionality
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Read painful to is English title the the in.
Perhaps quasius was confusing maintenance fees, reissues, and a lot of other obscure aspects of U.S. patent law that aren't discussed very often even on Slashdot. A U.S. patent lasts 3.5 years after issue, with three renewals available at extra cost. The first two renewals are 4 years each, and the third is to 20 years after filing or 17 years after issue.
If they only wanted the patents, wouldn't it have been cheaper just to license them?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
If MMI thought it had stronger patents in its portfolio, it would have brought them to court agains Apple and Microsoft. But only those 18 were put forward.
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$510,204.08
well, until they started making cell phones... now they're in danger of becoming another generic, boring, shiny-goods firm .. .. mobile phones are hardly interesting devices. .. please dont .. let the boring, and/or toy companies make the consumerist cellphones.
i mean
the Android OS aint too bad, but Motorola
become indistinguishable from xxx other far eastern
manafacturers
I was thinking about buying one.
But there's no good reason to do so. Lets break it down by use:
1) Use as normal tablet. The iPad has better hardware for the most part, and vastly better software. Even an Android tablet would serve you better software wise.
2) Use for a mix of hacking/normal tablet use. Essentially the same argument, only now you start to consider the hacking communities are greatly more robust for either Android / iOS.
So basically if you are about to buy one, stop and think - might you not be better off just getting a normal tablet?
The only people I could see this tablet making sense for are people on a seriously tight budget that they truly only have $100 for... otherwise in the long run it makes way more sense to spring more for another tablet with a lifetime of support ahead - and Apple is selling refurbished iPad 1 units of r$299 now (Ok, that went out of stock since the last I looked at it but they ave 32GB units as well for $100 more). That gets full iOS5 support...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
5 for design, actually - so yes, in 2006 you could make an MP3 player that looked like the original iPod (but only in looks - functionality is covered by a different set of patents). Heck, it was speculated back then if the iPod competitors would look like the original iPod.
And patent law's really strange enough - it's 20 years after filing, or 17 years after approval, depending on when the patent was actually filed. We're coming to the end of that odd period (it happened around 1993 or so...).
Not Even Close to Being a Lawyer
Sure, but they have acquired 17,000 granted patents and 7,000 pending ones.
The whole reason they mention these 18 is because it's not about volume, it's about content and quality of the patents. How many are for things like special case screws, or things related only to interacting with cable systems?
The list of 18 is an attempt to suss out which patents actually MATTER. Note that in any of the large lawsuits we are talking about, it's not Apple or Microsoft using 4000 patents in the complaint - it's a tiny handful. So which tiny handful are useful enough for Google to counter with, that is the question.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
6 patents from Illinois 1 lawsuit:
5,311,516 Paging System Using Message Fragmentation to Redistribute Traffic
5,319,712 Method and Apparatus for Providing Cryptographic Protection of Data Stream in a Communication System
5,490,230 Digital Speech Coder Having Optimized Signal Energy Parameters
5,572,193 Method for Authentication and Protection of Subscribers in Telecommunications Systems
6,175,559 Method for Generating Preamble Sequences in a Code Division Multiple Access System
6,359,898 Method for Performing a Countdown Function During a Mobile-Originated Transfer for a Packet Radio System
6 patents from Illinois 2 lawsuit:
5,359,317 Method and apparatus for selectively storing a portion of a received message in a selective call receiver
5,636,223 Methods of adaptive channel access attempts
6,246,697 Method and system for generating a complex pseudonoise sequence for processing a code division multiple access signal
6,246,862 Sensor controlled user interface for portable communication device
6,272,333 Method and apparatus in a wireless communication system for controlling a delivery of data
7,751,826 System and method for E911 location privacy protection
6 patents from Florida:
5,710,987 Receiver having concealed external antenna
5,754,119 Multiple pager status synchronization system and method
5,958,006 Method and apparatus for communicating summarized data
6,008,737 Apparatus for controlling utilization of software added to a portable communication device
6,101,531 System for communicating user-selected criteria filter prepared at wireless client to communication server for filtering data transferred from host to said wireless client
6,377,161 Method and apparatus in a wireless messaging system for facilitating an exchange of address information
US Government will have to declare war against this spy eventually.
(FTFA)
"In a patent-infringement case that started today at the International Trade Commission, Microsoft
accused Motorola Mobility of infringing seven of its patents and requested a halt to imports of certain
Motorola phones. The trial is the first smartphone dispute to be heard since Google announced it would
buy Motorola Mobility."
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
I'm on my comfy chair.
none
The point remains. Why exactly does it make sense to buy a 1994 patent in 2011? I think this confirms that the article is just a fluff piece.
Don't patents from 1994 expire this year anyway?
Don't patents expire after 17 years? It might be 20 years; I can't make sense of the legalese. If it's 17 years though, any 1994 patents would be expiring this year.
Your kidding me... you twitter that?