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Google In Battle With Its Own Lawyers

Posted by samzenpus on from the keeps-your-friends-close dept.

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."

24 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. So, by rotorbudd · · Score: 5, Funny

    We're talking lawyers here.

    --
    A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
    1. Re:So, by Kohenkatz · · Score: 5, Funny

      The Pogo quote in your sig sums this up better than any other comment on the page.

    2. Re:So, by hot+soldering+iron · · Score: 5, Informative

      I had a friend whose family was so ashamed of his uncle, he was barred from ever visiting. They used to tell people he was in prison for drug dealing. He was a lawyer. For the IRS.

      Another friend actually wanted to be a lawyer, and help people. When his lessons had him shadow a real lawyer, he found out his two goals were mutually exclusive. He said it was like dealing with the mafia. Do evil for pay, and leave it at the office while pretending to be a nice person to your kids and wife. And that was one of the more reputable law firms in town...

      --
      When you want something built, come see me. If you want correct grammar and spelling, get a F*ing liberal arts student.
    3. Re:So, by Rubinstien · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. Lesson of the day: by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Never, never trust a lawyer.

    --
    Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
    1. Re:Lesson of the day: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I really don't get the irrational hatred for lawyers on Slashdot. It's possible that the facts here will show that the law firm has broken a professional code of conduct, which if their jurisdiction is like mine carries penalties under the law. You might as well say "never, never trust a black man" after the hundredth item of news about a black man committing a violent crime, conveniently ignoring the other x million non-violent black men.

      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 they'll face worse consequences than a layperson if they break it. If you don't like the law - and there are lots of laws not to like - then by attacking the lawyers you are essentially saying, "I believe the problem is not some particular law but that we even have the rule of law." You are annoyed because some legislative process exists which gives rights and duties and there are remedies for enforcing those rights and duties. But ubi remedium ibi ius: there is no law/justice without a means of enforcing it.

      Your problem is with your legislature, a corrupt shower of bastards voted in by an ignorant population. We have a similar problem on the other side of the pond, although in our case it's more apathetic cynicism than mindless patriotism. Deal with them and let your judiciary enforce the laws you want. Common law systems are really top of their class, as far as this planet goes.

    2. Re:Lesson of the day: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      That sounds like lawyer talk. GET A ROPE!

    3. Re:Lesson of the day: by Anthony+Mouse · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Lesson of the day: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:Lesson of the day: by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    6. Re:Lesson of the day: by Bacon+Bits · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well put.

      Personally, I've found my opinion of lawyers is concisely stated in this quote from Henry Peter Brougham, a British Lord, statesman, and, yes, lawyer:
      "A lawyer is a learned gentleman who rescues your estate from your enemies and keeps it himself."

      Or paraphrasing a friend going through a divorce:
      Seeing my lawyer has all the all the discomfort of a dental procedure, all the frustration of a visit to the DMV, and all the aggrivation of a cell phone bill. Except I don't get anything as useful as a root canal, a drivers licence, or a cell phone. I just get the promise of another visit in a month.

      --
      The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
    7. Re:Lesson of the day: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

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

      Laws are written by lobbyists and rich business executives.

    8. Re:Lesson of the day: by turbidostato · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "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.

    9. Re:Lesson of the day: by Anthony+Mouse · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  3. Concurrent COI by Jayfield · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...

    1. Re:Concurrent COI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The only problem with this is that no one has sued Google, outside of Oracle. The cases were against other companies and not Google itself. It's definitely dishonest, but then again it's lawyers. They probably have plenty of wiggle room to steer clear of any real problems.

  4. What conflict of interest? by Arancaytar · · Score: 5, Funny

    There's no conflict; the lawyer's interests are perfectly consistent.

  5. Re:An outside law firm ? by Neil_Brown · · Score: 5, Informative

    why have not they set up their own shark team yet ?

    Google has its own legal team, but that doesn't end the need for external legal advice at times, if only because of the ability to scale up quickly by using a law firm (e.g. during a discovery phase of litigation, or due diligence during an acquisition).

    (I'm employed as a lawyer in a substantial in-house legal team, which has a panel of law firms.)

  6. Re:An outside law firm ? by marcroelofs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:An outside law firm ? by oiron · · Score: 5, Informative

    Many things can't be done by in-house lawyers. I don't know how it is in the US, but here in India, a case cannot be argued in court by in-house lawyers. This is done partly to reduce conflicts of interest. An attorney is supposed to be able to give his client advice the client doesn't want to hear, and by being independent, that's supposed to help a bit.

    Also, having a specialized company handling multiple clients rather than each company trying to replicate the function is probably more efficient?

  8. Re:What kind of Slashdot is this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    No - but it should be!

  9. Re:What kind of Slashdot is this? by gman003 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  10. Hated of lawyers? by phorm · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  11. Re:What kind of Slashdot is this? by geminidomino · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?!