BT Sues Google Over Android

phonewebcam writes "British Telecom is claiming billions of dollars of damages from Google in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. which says that the Android mobile operating system infringes a number of the telecoms company's key patents. The lawsuit, filed in the state of Delaware in the U.S., relates to six patents which BT says are infringed by the Google Maps, Google Music, location-based advertising and Android Market products on Android. If successful, the suit could mean that Google or mobile handset makers will have to pay BT royalties on each Android handset in use and which they produce."

Comments

I'll be watching this one

[msobkow]

There's one big reason I'll pay attention to this one:

filed in the state of Delaware in the US

Patent trolls file in Texas; serious patent holders file in Delaware.

Re:I'll be watching this one

[JonahsDad]

I don't think they are patent trolls, somehow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_Group

Depends on your point of view. This is the company that sued (and lost) claiming a patent on the hyperlink.
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/networking/2000/12/18/bt-sues-over-hyperlink-claim-2083266/

What the fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

The patent cited in the article as an example of BT's amazingly valuable innovations:

Deciding whether to stream music based on whether the phone is using a wifi or cellular connection.

Why the fuck is that patentable? Seriously, I just looked up "obvious" in the dictionary and it gave that idea as an example. That's not an invention or a technology. What the fuck, America?

Everybody wants a piece of Android's action

[PolygamousRanchKid]

This seems like the new business model:

1. Find a large volume successful product.
2. Convince a court that it infringes on "your" patent.
3. Settle for "a few cents" per item sold, as the Mafia say, "a piece of the action." Like a "tax."
4. Profit, for someone else's work.

I do not like these developments. Soon the royalty fees on an Android will cost more than the device itself.

John Carmack on Software patents

[BlackSupra]

>The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it
>with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally
>used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years
>ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.
>
> On software patents, Quoted in "John Carmack: Knee Deep in the Voodoo" Voodo Extreme(2000-09-20)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack

Re:Because it was british

[Ensign Morph]

I mean, take a look at Apple's "If it's black and rectangular, it's ours" patent.

The ipad injunction involved a European "Community Design", an appallingly stupid concept which is actually considerably worse than patents. There's no obviousness or prior art test AT ALL, they're simply granted automatically upon payment of the filing fee. It's absolutely guaranteed to be abused like this, in fact as the link shows Apple have a program that spam-registers designs which they have no intention of even using, just to make life difficult for their competitors. It's hard to escape the conclusion that it's simply a cynical device to collect those filing fees, with the negative effects on business and consumers being somebody else's problem.

Oh, and the extremely generic community design they used for the ipad thing was filed in 2004, 6 years before the first ipad announcement.