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Google In Battle With Its Own Lawyers
An anonymous reader writes "Google is at daggers end with a law firm it's been using since 2008, after discovering that lawyers in the law firm, named Pepper Hamilton LLP, were representing a patent licensing business that sued Google's Android partners last month. Google has claimed that Pepper Hamilton LLP never provided notice that it was hired by Digitude Innovations LLC, the firm that filed patent infringement complaints against Google's business allies."
We're talking lawyers here.
A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
Never, never trust a lawyer.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
google has the finances to buy out entire u.s. legal system. why have not they set up their own shark team yet ? ............
really. the way silicon valley takes these threats to the digital age - like copyright/big media, patent trolls etc, anti-net neutrality etc - is WAY too carefree and lighthearted. even, totally oblivious.
for example, sopa/pipa thwarted, another is being cooked, acta already being pushed, and silicon valley is not doing shit.
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Every time you open a file, first thing you do is check for conflicts.
If that happened in my state and Google wanted to push it to the end, that firm could lose its firm license and the lawyers in charge could lose their licenses too.
But then again, my state takes conflicts of interest very seriously.
It sounds like this law firm just violated Model Rule 1.7(a)(1), which is concurrently representing adverse clients. Someone's getting in trouble with the state bar...
There's no conflict; the lawyer's interests are perfectly consistent.
I really don't see the problem. Last I checked, google hasn't stepped-up to defend these partners when such litigation is brought forth. Why would they get all huffy about this?
But lawyers turning on their clients reminds me of animal farm just a bit.
looks like google will have to search for a new law firm.
I'm sure the Nazgul are free post SCO.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
The lawyers promised to do no evil!
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
For a company full to the brim with extraordinarily smart and gifted people, Google sure is being.. less than cunning as of late. Sure, they may succeed, despite themselves, eventually, but fuck, it looks bad. The numerous screw-ups with Google+ come to mind, and then letting Microsoft collect "taxes" from nearly all Android licensees (and Google just sitting around with its dick in hand) and now this.
I look at these apparent mistakes, and kind of hope there is some diabolic plan in place at Google, but the more I observe, the more it looks like good-old stupidity taking hold.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
They were using Google Docs....
How do I know?
All the stars are still there.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
No. While what you said is usually true, it is because of an underlying variable: publicity. When there are repeated screw ups, those are most likely to be public. However, the real measure is publicity. Every interaction that involves a lawyer makes the rest took bad. Therefore, they try to get rid of those as quietly as possible. For example, in my state, if you are willing to admit that you did what they say you did, then they will let it go if you just pay back any missing money to the client, get any substance abuse or depression treatment you need and go to a monthly meeting for 6 months. It doesn't even show up on your record or theirs. All so that it stays quiet.
Here is an example in my state, one lawyer in my state stole $20,000 which was in the paper and resulted in federal charges. He was disbarred with no possibility of reinstatement. Another lawyer, that same year, stole $30,000 which was NOT in the paper and did not result in any criminal charges. He was suspended for two months until he "finished" his drug treatment. And the only reason I know about this situation is because I know the lawyer who represented both of them. He has complained up and down about how corrupt the system is and uses that as one of his *many* examples.
This is what the lawyers in this story do not have.
If you have a client that you represent, you can never never never go against them in a court of law. To do so makes you the absolute worst, scum of the earth.
Lawyers like this need to be disbarred and never allowed to practice law again.
Lawyers are paid to be professional and do their jobs to the best of their abilities. If that requires them to be amoral, then thats just part of the job. It has to be selective morality: they can't lie to the judge, at least they can't intentionally lie. The can obfuscate to their hearts content. If buddy is a murdering child molester, they have to defend to the best of their abilities. Of course, money always helps. Think of the law firm in this case acting like an arms dealer. If both sides spend heavily to get better guns, and the war escalates and more people die and that in turn makes each side want to spend even more money for even more and bigger guns, the dealer only makes more money. If he supplies both sides, its like turning the toilet paper over and being able to use both sides. So what's the problem? The law firm gets to profit from both sides. Its what law firms do. Go ahead and try and train a shark to nurse baby salmon. See how far you get.
Dump them & move on. Don't waste effort on the parasites.
No - but it should be!
The differences, of course.
First, there's no history of violence against lawyers. There's never been (to my knowledge) a lawyer genocide, or a lawyer slavery. Remarks about racial discrimination, even in jest, are at best uncomfortable because there was once some sincerity to it.
Second, people cannot choose their race. I did not choose to be Caucasian. But people can, with very few exceptions, choose their profession - I chose to become a programmer, lawyers chose to become lawyers.
That's why it's funny. Because there's none of the uncomfortable realness that comes with race-based jokes.
* Except NYCL!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
You trusted us.
No honour amongst thieves.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Don't you just hate it when you strengthen a system, like patents, and it gets worse, and you strengthen it even more, and it gets worse, and you strengthen it still more, and it gets worse?
Psst -- Google, Apple, Motorola, Microsoft, IBM -- come here, I want to tell you something.
When the machine that you have built is moving too much revenue from the producers to the inventors; you can fix it by making it move less revenue from the producers to the inventors. When producing for the customer is paying less and less, and having lawyers and patents is paying more and more, and it is leading to wild legal thickets that make it unattractive to produce things for the customer, the system is out of balance. Much like copyright, the answer to a malfunctioning patent system is not always stricter patents. Sometimes the answer is weaker patents. You should be able to see that pretty clearly from where you are standing. Just open your damned eyes.
You are getting hoist by your own petard. Wake up and figure it out, already. You own the government now, so we can't do anything to help you. You've got to tell the legislators you own to cut back on patent strength, or you -- and all of us, not that you give a shit -- but you are going to lose all you have built.
Ask yourself this: Are we having more problems with companies not bothering to come up with cool new patentable things? Or are we having more problems with companies squabbling over who is allowed to build which things? If the bigger problem is the latter, it means we need to reduce the rate of revenue flow or we will all lose. It is actually a pretty easy thing to control through patent policy -- strengthen it, more revenue flows, weaken it, less revenue flows; like a faucet -- you just have to open your eyes and recognize the problem.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
They should switch to Boies, Schiller & Flexner.
They were able to out-sleaze M$.
I don't see a hatred against all lawyers, but a general distrust of the industry and a hatred of bad/immoral/etc lawyers.
NYCL is fairly popular here, as are the folks at Groklaw (OK, P.J. is actually a paralegal). The others (patent troll lawyers, Jack Thompson, etc) are surely unpopular here, but IMHO in most cases their lack of popularity is rather warranted.
Uhh, isn't that grounds for disbarment? I thought it was basically illegal to represent both parties within the same lawfirm, it being a conflict of interest and all. It was my impression that it was grounds for disbarment if a lawyer knowingly did that. I would find it incredibly hard to believe that the firm did not know they were representing Google and also suing them... that just seems virtually impossible.
It's like the episode of Seinfeld where Jerry's dentist is making Jewish jokes, and Jerry starts making dentist jokes. Then the dentist gets all upset because his "people" (the dentists) are oppressed, and Kramer calls Jerry an "anti-dentite". Classic.
It's an oblique Shakespeare reference.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Can you say conflict of interest?
In my experience lawyers exist to extract money from clients.
When I told my lawyer that I needed a EULA for an iPhone / iPad app and gave him a list of concerns, he called me back 15 minutes later to say that Apple's App Store EULA covers third parties like me and that my listed concerns are covered there. That I didn't need my own EULA.
There must be something wrong with my lawyer, he served me well rather than extract the maximum amount of money. YMMV.
Yes, it is true. There are good lawyers and bad lawyers. But you contradict yourself when you say:
"Let me summarise as simply as possible: lawyers provide advice and speak on your behalf in defending your rights under the law. That's all they do. They don't get to make law..."
and
"Your problem is with your legislature, a corrupt shower of bastards voted in by an ignorant population."
What profession exactly do you think the corrupt bastards who write the laws belong to?
http://www.wimp.com/lawyerscongress/
That's not true in America, where we have a highly "fused" legal profession. Not only are the traditional functions of solicitors and barristers one and the same, even the fields of law and equity* are united in the same courts. (The only real distinction is in the remedy one requests of the court.)
*equity is an interesting concept that arose in medieval times. While "law" assumes that an award of money heals all wounds, "equity" -- that which is avoids "offending the conscience of the King" -- allows for non-monetary results.
First, there's no history of violence against lawyers. There's never been (to my knowledge) a lawyer genocide,
When you point things like that out, it really makes me depressed about the nature of humanity and society.
I mean... why the hell not?!
take the giant portrait pic in your homepage down dammit.
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taking down whole mafiaa out is not necessary. what's needed is to break the cartel. and from among those, the only ones needed are the ones holding the news hostage. take out news corp, and you got not only a major news channel which was previously used for attacks on internet, but also a major hollywood propaganda corporation in the mix.
just using one major news channel to broadcast the opposition perspective in these copyright shit, would totally balance and offset the easy and surefire attempts the media cartels were doing.
see, even the sopa thing was not broadcast longer than 2 minutes or so in these channels, and that is after the shit hit the fan. if, news corp or another news channel was owned by silicon valley, and started broadcasting about sopa 2 months ago, there wouldnt even be a sopa hitting the house floors.
in addition realize that you dont need to buy entirety of a corporation to control it. news corp is worth 50 bn in total, everything included. just google's cash is 44 billion. acquiring controlling shares of news corp, would be enough, and google has more than enough cash at hand to do it.
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nerds are on the edge of ruling the world, and the only thing that is preventing them are the media dinosaurs ?
most of what was 'nerd' 5 years ago has become the cultural norm already. all that is left are the old ways of doing things. in media, economics and politics. the new culture had half-taken over media already, but they are fighting back to keep the status quo.
Read radical news here
...Stalin had no use for Lawyers.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Lawyers make the powerful more powerful.
Unless they all work for a set wage and do not take kickbacks, bribes, aid or other inducement, the best lawyer will win and the best lawyer will cost more, therefore the more money you have, the more lawyer you get.
So they make the powerful more powerful without making an avenue for the common man for redress.
There's a name for lawyers who represent one group and another at the same time, when those two groups enter litigation against each other, and the lawyers don't fix the situation by resigning, etc... the name is "disbarred". Of course they're lawyers, so who knows, perhaps they'll find a way to weasel out of the seeming difficulties.
This entire article is probably blowing things way out of proportion. The law firm in question - Pepper Hamilton - has 11 offices and 500 attorneys. Whenever a new client comes in, EVERY law firm will perform a conflict check to make sure that none of the parties that it currently represents has interests that are adverse to the new client. What likely happened here - I am guessing - is that the Android partners did not come up as being in conflict because Google was not listed as a named party in the Android partner litigation. That + a system of 500 lawyers who probably exhibit the typically poor communication of large networks and you have the issue here. This is a big gaffe for the law firm, but otherwise, this is not really a big deal. Pepper I am sure has transferred its plaintiff's case against Google to another firm and is doing some major asskissing at Google headquarters as we speak.
In 1958, my grandfather worked for Purina and was severely injured falling four stories down an elevator shaft. The elevator had no doors. He was a complete invalid until he died ten years later. His and my grandmother's lives were living hells.
Grandma spoke to a few lawyers in the area, all of whom told her she she had no case, despite Purina's obvious negligence.
My dad found out later that Purina had every lawyer in the state on its payroll. It's disgusting what lawyers who are owned by soulless corporations will do for their dirty money.
Free Martian Whores!
This is not the first time Pepper Hamilton's seriously fucked up their conflicts-checking process.
http://articles.philly.com/1992-11-16/news/26008388_1_sprague-settlement-law-suit
Second, people cannot choose their race.
Tell that to Michael Jackson. Please.
This law firm is facing a very serious charge. They're going to have to figure out how to spin this to avoid admitting the information google gave them wasn't used in prosecuting the Android mobile partners. Some people are going "But,but, they're HUUUUUGEEE!" and that is true and it may not mean a thing for people like us who use their services and then our opponent uses them because we're so small. The sheer size of Google and it's representative within the firm means it was inevitable that if they were to take on a client that opposed Google's operations that the information was easily available and inevitably looked at by somebody, it's too tempting. This is a major issue that while it may not end in disbarment it will end badly for some mid-level attorney that failed to check for conflicts.