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."

Comments

Lesson of the day:

[TheDarkMaster]

Never, never trust a lawyer.

Re:Lesson of the day:

[Anonymous Coward]

lawyers provide advice and speak on your behalf in defending your rights under the law

In this case, those lawyers both defend Google's rights and the rights of their direct competitors. Could be fun in court, one lawyer defending *both* parties. I don't think any judge would accept that.

Now admittedly, what's going on here is probably a slight bit more subtle: different (I might hope!!) lawyers working for the same company, defending both Google and their competitors. Still it's a pretty clear-cut case of conflicting interests there. If they're ethical, they can be professional about it and not talk about their clients to each other. The problem is, how do you know? At least if those lawyers work for different entities, it's less likely they'll leak information to each other around the water cooler.

Re:Lesson of the day:

[Anthony Mouse]

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.

No, they do one other thing, which is the thing people hate them for: They self-replicate. If you encounter a lawyer, you need to get your own lawyer to deal with them. When it turns out that your lawyer has a conflict of interest, you need another lawyer to take on the work the first lawyer had, the lawyer's other client that created the conflict needs another lawyer for the same reason, you then need a different kind of lawyer to consider going after the first lawyer for malpractice for not disclosing the conflict, your old lawyer needs his own lawyer to defend against the possible malpractice claim, on and on. By the time you're the size of Google you're drowning in a sea of lawyers.

While it's true that the legislature is in part responsible for the laws that result in anyone attempting to do business in this country needing to hire an entire division of attorneys, the attorneys themselves are the ones who lobby to keep it that way.

I'll give you an example: Software patents. The strongest lobby preventing software patents from being eliminated is the software patent lawyers. Larger software companies hate them (because of patent trolls), smaller software companies hate them (because it allows larger companies to crush them), individual software engineers hate them (because it's all a giant waste of time). The only people who want them are patent lawyers and patent trolling companies that are full of patent lawyers.

Re:Lesson of the day:

[TheDarkMaster]

In an ideal world you would be correct, but in the real world lawyers give so many reasons to be hated that it is very, very difficult to speak well of them.

Re:Lesson of the day:

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone hates lawyers until they need one

... and then they continue to hate them, with a passion that only increases every time they open their mailbox and find a bill from their lawyer. Justice has become so expensive that normal citizens can't afford it. Greedy lawyers are a big reason for why we find ourselves in that position.

Re:Lesson of the day:

[Attila Dimedici]

You miss the fact that most of those laws you need lawyers to deal with were written by lawyers. To quote the GP, "Your problem is with your legislature, a corrupt shower of bastards voted in by an ignorant population." And most of those people in the legislature are lawyers.
This brings up my second law of voting, "Vote against the lawyer." When voting, if one of the candidates is not a lawyer, unless there is an overwhelmingly convincing reason to do otherwise, that is the candidate you should vote for.

Re:Lesson of the day:

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowing the law is kinda advantageous both to reach and to work in a position where you're making it. Lawyers are a good example of people who know and understand the law. Now it's not necessary to have as much understanding as a lawyer to work in the legislature, nor is it sufficient. How about having a word with your fellow voter about this? Your representatives don't vote themselves in, no matter how cynically you want to try to paint it.

Or look at it another way. Choose a random lawyer then choose a random engineer. The random lawyer is very unlikely to have anything whatever to do with choosing your laws. The random engineer is fairly unlikely to be involved in [some field of which you disapprove], but much more likely to be so. Do you hate on all scientists?

Now the wording of bills is doubtless going to be prepared by lawyers, but this is only on behalf of whoever's proposing the bill. Hopefully you can see the advantage of laws written in a language suitable for application by the judiciary and executive, as opposed to laws written by a layman which become fairly loosely interpretable according to the whims of the reader. They laws may still be too broadly or vaguely written, and whose fault is that? Tell your legislature to stop accepting vague laws.

The purposive approach makes this worse or better, depending on how you look at it - it's increasingly popular in the UK and already at the top of the methods of interpretation for EU law.

Re:Lesson of the day:

[richwa]

Lawyers are nothing but hired guns to fight battles. An attorney is required to provide the best defense or offense for their client regardless of what they think of their client. If attorneys started refusing to provide legal defenses for the worst of the worst then how would we really know who they are; the government would be free jail most anyone by claiming them "the worst of the worst."

The biggest source of lobbying for software patents are companies like MS and groups like the Business Software Alliance not patent attorneys (unless they are paid for doing the lobbying.) This are the same people that have pushed for SOPA and ProtectIP. (MS and BSA rescinded their support, I think, after all our hue and cry.)

Your example of software patents falls flat. You are absolutely right about software patents; they should not exist. But, it's not the patent lawyers that are creating the problems, it's the people that hire the lawyers that are the root problem. (In most cases these people are not attorneys but usually Wall Street, vulture capital types.)

The real reason that lawyers have a bad rap is that they can win big $$$ for their clients from corporations thus cutting into their profits ergo a long-term on-going swiftboat of them. What people forget is that is people like them -- people like us -- that are sitting on those juries and making these awards in the name of justice and in attempting to prevent future damages to the common good. As long as an attorney can get $100 million from a company like Exxon when they purposely give someone cancer, attorneys will be vilified by those who care more about their profits than our well-being; it's called negative advertising and it works.

Re:Lesson of the day:

[JonySuede]

You need a Java developer. And an Oracle DBA. And a Linux admin. And a Windows server admin. And someone to babysit your NetApp. And a network admin. And a .NET person. And on, and on, and on.

And then they still tell you that you need consultants because upgrading a critical part of infrastructure is very complicated.

This is what I hate about building software systems.
When a company outgrows its office, they have an architect design another more adapted building, they usually sell the first and they have a professional construction company built the building according to the plan. However, when software is involved, the current system are kept, digital duck-tape is used and the new system is somehow working with the old one at the price of an incredible maintenance cost.

If we had a professional software architect title, much like the professional engineer title, we could have something that resemble the building/electrical/gmp codes. We would have software architecture cabinet that design and supervise the execution and we would have software construction companies... The assorted set of workers that are needed in software construction could form theirs own professional associations. And peoples and companies would be accountable for failure.

Everyone, who's professional enough to remain a member of his professional association, salary would raise up as it is usually the case when a title gets reserved. We could then refuse to support those crap assortment of systems as they would not be up to the software construction code.

Re:Lesson of the day:

[hot soldering iron]

You think the hatred of lawyers is "irrational"? This site is FULL of rational people, and most all of them either hate lawyers, or have had little to do with them. So guess which group you sound like...

You then blame the executive branch of government, which is mostly lawyers, and seem to be saying "hate the game, not the players". But the players are the one's running the game...

Re:Lesson of the day:

[ATMAvatar]

Another reason why people hate lawyers as individuals:

Lawyers appear to have no morality. This is not really the fault of the lawyer - in fact, one could say it is the job of a lawyer to check his/her sense of morality at the door so he/she can properly represent their client. That makes it incredibly difficult to separate out those lawyers who are decent people only doing their job and those lawyers who really have no morals. The obvious, emotional/knee-jerk response is to assume that they are all sociopaths.

Re:Lesson of the day:

[Sabriel]

The root issue I have with patents - software or otherwise - is that anyone and everyone who independently arrives at the same solution are all screwed, solely because one entity has paid the government to prevent anyone else from using that solution without paying up.

It's a protection racket under colour of authority. "Pay me for having the same idea I had, or I'll send the boys^Wgovernment around to ruin you." That's the patent system. That's "gimme gimme gimme."

Until you change that fundamental aspect of the system, until patents allow for independent invention, that's the system you're defending.

As with Free Software, if you don't like it, go develop an alternative yourself, and release it for free. On2 & Google did exactly that.

And how far do you think On2/Google would've gotten if they hadn't had their own army of mercenaries^W laywers to deter the existing codec patent holders from attacking them?

Re:Lesson of the day:

[turbidostato]

"No, they're not. For example, less than 35% of the US House of Representatives are lawyers."

In other words: no less than 1/3 of the US House of Representatives are lawyers. Which is the most represented single profession.

Re:Lesson of the day:

[Anthony Mouse]

You need a Java developer. And an Oracle DBA. And a Linux admin. And a Windows server admin. And someone to babysit your NetApp. And a network admin. And a .NET person. And on, and on, and on.

I don't understand what a list of job titles has anything to do with it? Obviously some companies hire a lot of techs, but it's not at all for the same reason that they have to hire a bunch of lawyers. The techs each do something productive. The lawyers only exist to cancel out the other side's lawyers: You don't have to hire another Java developer just because one of your competitors hired another Java developer. You do generally have to hire more patent lawyers if one of your competitors hires more patent lawyers.

Re:Lesson of the day:

[Anthony Mouse]

We make lots of real hardware, and lots of real software... we are not a patent troll. However, the top executives love software patents, because they are about 90% profit.

It sounds to me like you are a patent troll. If you actually made products then you would be the ones paying the license fees rather than collecting them, which leaves you in an approximate break even situation. Certainly that is inherently the situation industry wide: The average software company has a negative ROI from the existence of software patents, because every license fee collected by anyone is paid by someone else, and some of the recipients are patent trolls, which means that the system is necessarily a net negative for the companies that actually make software: The payments between software companies are breakeven on an industry level and the payments to trolls are deadweight losses.

We're somehow fine with the extensive R&D that has gone into mechanical engineering being patentable, but as soon as you can replace these with digital systems, the same R&D effort is no longer protected in many countries. It makes no sense

It makes perfect sense. Hardware has physical constraints, software is pure abstract math. You can't patent math -- and for good reason. I'm sure Einstein worked very hard on E=mc^2, but explaining how fusion works doesn't give you any right to exclude people from using sunlight.

it's just going to drive us back to a proprietary world, where everything is fiercly protected as trade secrets, and anything open is a thing of the past.

How do you expect trade secrets to be maintained within software that is distributed to the general public?

The most "pure" use case for software patents is MPEG. They wouldn't represent the best technology companies around the world have to offer, if software implementations could not be capitalized upon. And don't tell me about free software... Theora and WebM were both developed by On2, which made its money with proprietary codecs which could be licensed for less than patent licenses for the MPEG technologies. If not for software patents, we probably wouldn't have made it past Cinepak, or MPEG-1 at best, before falling back into proprietary-only solutions.

What are you talking about? You can't have a "proprietary" video codec without software patents. It would get reverse engineered inside of two weeks. On top of that, most of the codec research is done by universities rather than private companies.

But never mind that, let's talk about On2. If Google found it cost effective to pay the money (in the form of buying the company) to develop a new codec so that it would be available for everyone to use for free, what makes you think they wouldn't have done the same thing without software patents? If anything the free codec would have been better, because it wouldn't have had to make intentionally inefficient choices specifically to avoid the MPEG patent pool.

Re:Lesson of the day:

[DerekLyons]

This site is FULL of rational people

Slashdot is full of rational people? You're either new around here, or seriously out of touch. The only difference between Slashdot and your average tinfoil hat/truther/birther site is that most Slashdotters know how to spell and capitalize, and are at least vaguely conversant with punctuation.

Re:Lesson of the day:

[Apple Acolyte]

First AC, I commend you for the very reasonable defense of your (presumed) profession. I agree with much of what you wrote. But I felt compelled enough to login to speak to one point you raised:

They don't get to make law and they'll face worse consequences than a layperson if they break it.

I have dealt with more than a few lawyers, including working with them (for free on my part) and employing them. I have considered law school in the past (the direction I was urged by family and friends to go in) - I enjoy law and our legal system (generally). The fact is, however, it is not within my realm of experience to corroborate your claim that lawyers face worse consequences if they break the law. I have experienced quite the opposite.

When I went up against a lawyer who was trying to steal away corporate rights from an organization I helped manage, I witnessed said lawyer act in bad faith, violate the canons of ethics in many respects and even perjure himself in a brazen fashion, in an attempt to prevail against our side. We contacted his state bar with proof of these strong claims and were essentially told that while perhaps some of his actions were questionable, he wasn't violating their standards. They showed us that, at least in that instance, first and foremost lawyers protect one another.

Against substantial odds we prevailed against the scum bag lawyer being discussed, but other than the settlement that barred him from attacking us in the future, we got not satisfaction in recompense for his wrongdoing from the legal system. No repayment for the very considerable legal expenses he forced us to pay to fight him off.

So, Attorney AC, based on my admittedly thin anecdotal experience, lawyers very often don't get punished for violating the law. They know how to take advantage of the system, and their colleagues protect them. They resort to underhanded and at times explicitly illegal tactics to gain the upper hand, and they don't get called on it except in extraordinary situations. I've also found that even good lawyers often have to resort to doing bad things in the course of their duties. Given that so many lawyers are scum, it's not hard to surmise that even the good ones have to act like scum in the course of dealing with the true scum. There is such a thing as a good lawyer; many presumably exist. They don't deserve to be negatively stereotyped. But the profession itself, at least in the US, justifiably carries a bad reputation.

An outside law firm ?

[unity100]

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.

Re:An outside law firm ?

[marcroelofs]

More to the point, why would a lawfirm having a client with the stature and glamour like Google risk all by even negotiating with a conflicting cient.

Re:An outside law firm ?

[SteveFoerster]

Google could buy out the whole MAFIAA with little leverage, and with cooperation with Facebook and co, even straight out.

...were it not for antitrust legislation.

Re:Concurrent COI

[m.ducharme]

Other than the problem of losing one of their biggest - if not the biggest - clients.

Re:never trust a lawyer *

[TaoPhoenix]

* Except NYCL!

Re:What kind of Slashdot is this?

[mgiuca]

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.

Re:So,

[Rubinstien]

Seems that times have changed. My wife's grandfather was a lawyer and one of the first juvenile court judges in the country, among other claims to fame. He died in the 1950's, fairly young, following an accident. Among the memorabilia passed down in the family are cards and letters from concerned kids that had been through his courtroom. I even read an interview with a now famous author that credited him by name for turning his life around. By all accounts, he was a good man. Reminds me of an Abraham Lincoln quote:

"Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough."

...greed seems to be the ingredient that ruins that recipe.