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Google Seeks US Ban On iPhones, iPads, Macs
theodp writes "Following up on an announcement that it would rid itself of 4,000 employees world-wide and renege on a deal with the State of Illinois, Google's Motorola Mobility unit said it has filed a new patent-infringement case against Apple, which seeks a ban on U.S. imports of devices including the iPhone, iPad and Mac computers. 'Apple's unwillingness to work out a license leaves us little choice but to defend ourselves and our engineers' innovations,' Motorola Mobility said in an e-mailed statement."
Why not ban the two companies from doing business in the US until they iron out a deal?
here we go again...
when will someone get the balls to hit the destruct button on the broken patent industry. I'm tired of reading about it, yet alone trying to keep abreast of it.
PS haven't RTFA but I am assuming this is another trivial software patent (although with MM there is a chance it is a valid hardware patent)
Self defense isn't evil. If someone hits you, you are allowed to hit them back.
If this were to succeed, just imagine the economic impact.
First, the Web 2.0 would collapse. Without Apple devices to participate in all sorts of useless "social media", the entire hipster culture would implode. This means Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, reddit and all of the other big names would be no more. (As a side-effect, there'd also be no further need for Ruby on Rails "developers" and NoSQL "experts" to build these kind of sites.)
If these hipsters aren't wasting time on web sites like those, or on trying to build the "next big startup", then they won't need to be sitting in Starbucks all day. Starbucks and its ilk could very well become the next victims!
Now you've got roving bands of hipsters on the loose, suffering severe withdrawal symptoms due to not having Apple devices in their possession, AND not having had any choco-latte-mochachinos lately. In uncontrolled outbursts, they lash out at their trust fund administrators. Stricken with fear after dealing with numerous crazed hipsters, these administrators flee their jobs, causing the financial sector to collapse into ruin.
The financial sector collapse causes economic ruin across the nation. There is no employment, imports eventually trail off, and people starve to death. Entire communities disappear, and their infrastructure crumbles. The country is destroyed.
I have some beer and chips left from the Samsung vs Apple case. But I'll buy a new couch for this one!
-- Cheers!
...the headline is all that anyone is going to read (here and elsewhere). And it's not good PR for Google.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Either:
A: they are desperately trying to do anything to help make their purchase of Motorola Mobile not look like the giant steaming turd that it is or
B: they purchased Motorola Mobile solely for this purpose...
Monstar L
This is all in response to Apple trying to kill the Android phone market by preventing their devices from being imported, and nothing more. Apple started all this lawsuit garbage, and deserves to be slapped down hard for the MANY cases of THEIR copying of ideas from others.
Google is good and would never sue anyone. I guess they are just looking for some more FRAND abuse smackdown.
Defensive (or even retaliatory) litigation is not looked at as unkindly as patent trolling (or other common abuses of the patent system)
Google will learn this is the worst 12.5b anyone ever spent.
Uh-huh. Google's a pretty smart company, I recollect the number of slashdot armchair analysts who say they'd regret the price they paid for youtube. I think the MM buy is going to work out just as well for them.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I can see Microsoft and others going with Google as well in this case, since hurting Apple would help EVERYONE. Apple is like the Chinese government in trying to control all the people within its sphere of control and force them to do things the way it wants. The "you MUST go through the iTunes store and pay us 30 percent" crap should really be investigated by the various government departments for violations of the law.
"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Appleâ(TM)s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. Iâ(TM)m going to destroy Android, because itâ(TM)s a stolen product. Iâ(TM)m willing to go thermonuclear war on this."
"I don't want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won't want it. I've got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, thatâ(TM)s all I want."
- Steve Jobs
Looks like Google's taken them up on the offer for war since the new Dictator is carrying out the same stupid plan. Hopefully this mutually assured destruction will get Apple to pull it's head out of it's ass. You don't stay rich giving all your money to lawyers. Would you simply acquiescing to the asshole's irrational demands? I wouldn't either.
Yep. This is Google explaining to Apple that they aren't the only one with patents. The monster patent portfolios of all the big players have exist in part to deter other large players from launching patent wars. It is a form of 'Mutually Assured Destruction'. Apple went nuclear starting a couple of years ago. Google (and other large players) are now launching their counter-strikes to demonstrate to Apple why it is a bad idea.
If Apple has any sense (more likely now that Steve Jobs is gone) they will begin quietly trying to wind down the patent wars.
"seven Motorola Mobility patents on features including location reminders, e-mail notification and phone/video players" -- doesn't sound very standards essential to me.
Maybe the thought of not being able to buy iPads and iPhones will wake up the U.S. to how badly screwed up the patent system is? Or maybe that thought will stop ITC from treating the case the same way it has treated cases against MotoGoogle.
The gloves are really off, the floodgates are open, the fat is on the fire etc. Although Google inherited cases from Motorola, this is the first time Google has directly sued Apple. Google has been reticent to take on Apple directly but they don't have much choice left now.
Interestingly, probably the sole patent victory for any Android manufacturer has been the ban on push e-mail from iCloud on Apple devices won by MotoGoogle, which still exists: http://www.tuaw.com/2012/04/13/apple-still-blocked-from-using-push-email-in-germany/
It is possible that a similar patent is among those involved here. Maybe the Motorola purchase wasn't as useless as Florian Muller makes it out to be...
Their purchase of Motorola was indeed primarily for this. They needed to be able to defend Android, and Google itself didn't have sufficient mobile patents to have a decent chance at prevailing in a court against Apple. Google + Moto on the other hand, very much the reverse.
Google's choices were - buy Nokia, RIM, Motorola, or the Nortel patents. Of that lot, Motorola made by far the most strategic sense since they had an enormous trove of on point patents, were affordable, and were already an Android partner. At the time, their losing the Nortel patent auction looked bad, but when they snapped up Motorola shortly thereafter, it all made sense.
Would they have been better off winning Nortel patents for (say) $5bn than spending $13.5+ for Motorola? [I'm counting anticipated restructuring costs in with the purchase price] Maybe. But it's entirely possible that Apple, Microsoft, RIM, etc. would have pushed the bidding on Nortel patents well above $5bn. Also, a lot of the Nortel patents would have been neither applicable nor remotely useful to Google. For a patent defense, Motorola is a much better fit.
Does it suck that companies have to spend billions in this fashion to create a legal defense? Yes. If you're an ardent Apple fan, it sucks that Google gets to attack Apple just because they bought a bunch of patents; if you're an ardent Google fan, it sucks that Apple is attacking Android manufacturers in the first place. For the rest of us, firing engineers and hiring lawyers does not seem a winning plan for engineers or the economy-at-large. Nice for lawyers though.
The article says that if they retain 2500 then they get the tax breaks: if they don't, they don't. They've clearly decided that the extra payroll isn't worth the breaks so they have chosen to give them up. That's the deal. Nothing is being "reneged" on. They are complying with the agreement.
IMHO such deals should not exist, but that's a seperate issue.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Only the bits that allow them to be judgmental of others.
I dunno, I think it is Apple who will ultimately regret their strategy.
Even if you think Apple have brought a lot to the mobile phone space you have to acknowledge they are depending on an awful lot of other peoples IP. Pre Apple (and still between other companies) IP issues in the mobile space seem to have been handled fairly amicably. Companies competed with their products, not lawsuits. Then Apple walks in, uses everybody else's IP but is incredibly unfriendly with their own.
I think this is a mistake for two reasons.
1) Outside identified FRAND patents all these other companies with years of mobile experience will inevitably have patents on things Apple does in iPhones and IPads.
2) Apple grows it's business by entering and disrupting existing markets. The existing mobile phone companies were perhaps asleep at the wheel in allowing Apple to get a foot in the door. They just viewed them as another competitor and thought they'd continue to do business the old way. No other market will make that mistake now. If Apple try to expand into a new market now then existing players will surely note their litigious nature and preemptively use whatever legal means are available to stop them getting a foot in the door.
Apple went "nuclear" without realizing what that means. You can use them if no one else also has nuclear capability or you can sit on them as a deterrent if other people do. By deploying their weapons Apple has ensured that every other company will feel it necessary to use theirs too (and in future, perhaps first).
TFA makes it pretty clear that they're not suing over the radio patents at all... this is over things like location awareness, e-mail push, and embedded video players....
Apple and Microsoft don't fight. They already have cross licensing deals in place. I've always wondered why Apple didn't take it's cash pile and discount macbooks to put a big dent into PC sales.
Because Apple want to earn money doing so - they keep increasing their market share already, and they want to keep their brand identity - premium products at a premium price, with industry leading design. They don't want to become another Dell.
... it's offense.
well, would be if apple hadn't tried to block nexus sales...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
It is not all about profit. Youtube is one of the most recognised brands in the world. In this space Earnings Per Share mean much less than market presence.
If I remember correctly the whole Motorola vs Apple ordeal or war predicates that of any other cases regarding patents. I personally think it had a lot to do with the fact that Microsoft threaded Motorola with a lawsuit which ended in Motorola taken a license on those patents. Not long after that Motorola sued Apple. So I have a bit of sour taste in my mouth when I see people telling that this is a "defensive" stance or "only because Apple has lawsuits". Or maybe Motorola also develops crystal balls that they can predict the future. I'm of the opinion that cheerleading for Motorola is a bit hypocritical. You are against "software" patents (which I am) or you are not, software patents aren't suddenly good things because it is used against a company that you hate.
Hello! Apple was threatening to SUE Motorola over swipe to unlock and others right when Microsoft threaned to sue them over FAT and ActiveSync. Motorolla fired back with actual litigation against the agressors. Please stop spreading misinformation.
Really?? Google's evil now because they're defending Android? Apple has been nothing but asshole towards all competition, filing countless frivolous lawsuits, finally Google stands up to say "have a taste of your own medicine" and that makes Google evil? Lame.
Google is probably just about as evil as Apple, but not for fighting back.
My memory is fuzzy, and I'm too lazy to research this myself, but my understanding is that part of the deal in the US (and probably other nations) that allowed the acquisition to go through was that Google would not aggressively attack others with the IP that they acquired from the deal.
Is this not the case? And if it is, wouldn't these actions be in violation of that agreement? Could Google face some sort of kickback for breaching this agreement, or possibly even an antitrust case?
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
I guess they are just looking for some more FRAND abuse smackdown.
Just because these are FRAND patents doesn't mean you don't have to license them. My understanding is that Apple is basically the only manufactuer that doesn't license these patents.
What I don't understand is why Apple expects others to respect patents to shapes and colors while the radio technology in their phones isn't worth their dime.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
I'm of the opinion that cheerleading for Motorola is a bit hypocritical. You are against "software" patents (which I am) or you are not, software patents aren't suddenly good things because it is used against a company that you hate.
There is nothing hypocritical about taking multiple factors into account in your moral judgements. You may generally be opposed to shooting strangers but think that such things are acceptable in war or in defense of your home. I'm normally against locking people in cages, but totally in favor of it when it comes to most murderers.
Life is a series of situations and what is acceptable in some situations is not in others. In this case one of the main reasons people hate Apple is because of their use of software patents. Having a policy where a company that attempts to use software patents finds itself suffering a PR hit and paying out much more heavily than they collect is not a bad outcome.
Yes but prior to Apple's involvement the tradition was a lot of cross licensing agreements. I like Apple, but they started this war.
He sued the mac rumors website for talking about rumors for upcoming products. I believe it was over the G4 toaster design,
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Either:
A: they are desperately trying to do anything to help make their purchase of Motorola Mobile not look like the giant steaming turd that it is or
B: they purchased Motorola Mobile solely for this purpose...
C: You don't understand what long-term planning is
I don't blame you, seems like 99% of population (aka 'instant gratification' crowd) doesn't understand it either.
You evidently don't understand how business development works.
Demanding 100% ROI in six years is not realistic. At a nominal 8% return, it will take about 9 years to recover their money. And that's nominal (i.e., assuming a "normal" rate of return based on the empirical average). Youtube just became profitable. So it will nominally pay for itself in 9 years.
On the other hand, acquiring Youtube turned Google into a media company. Have you noticed how Google is using resources to combat copyright infringement of movies recently? Why do you think that is? To drive users to legitimately licensed Google owned media distribution channels, which will increase the rate of return of the investment.
They also control a massive content distribution infrastructure, putting pressure on other distribution networks. Cable television companies are finding that they must lower their prices for all of their services in order to compete with the internet -- the largest legitimate chunks of which are represented by Youtube, Netflix, and Hulu. Eventually, the cable companies will be nothing but ISPs with perhaps some "premium" content for subscribers. But even that is doubtful -- the media companies are much better off selling licenses to anybody who wants them. Including Google. The only thing keeping the cable companies at all relevant is their valuable networking infrastructure.
Either way, Google gets more eye balls on their pages and more licensing deals for Youtube distribution.
They bought a lot more than 1.65B worth of market power.
After all, I am strangely colored.
From what I read: Apple's is using a Qualcomm communication chip in their devices. Qualcomm has already paid into the FRAND license pool (which is built into the price of their chips). That license is then extended to the customers that buy Qualcomm's chips. Since Apple (among many other companies) is Qualcomm's customer, the FRAND license is already covered.
Motorola going back and suddenly demanding 2.5% for iPhones using their FRAND looks like double dipping. If they get any kind of settlement, you will quickly see MM going after ANYBODY that uses communication chips based on their FRAND technology -- including Windows Phones, all other (non Motorola) Android phones, dumb phones, etc. Lawyers tend to keep doing what they do so long as money is involved.
Defending a patent from a frequent attacker is not attacking someone outright.
If I walk up and punch someone, it's an attack. If that person has been provoking me for an hour, and I deck him, it's self-defense.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Looks like a shoving match to me. (How many steps did I leave out?
Hello! Apple was threatening to SUE Motorola over swipe to unlock and others right when Microsoft threaned to sue them over FAT and ActiveSync. Motorolla fired back with actual litigation against the agressors. Please stop spreading misinformation.
Corrections:
Apple did not just threaten to sue Motorola over Swipe-to-Unlock, it actually did sue them and won. Swipe to unlock is a common idea, present long before any sort of smartphone or touch-screen device ever had it, and is entirely a software patent.
Motorola sued Apple and won over the method the 3G radio chips use to time the signals to and from the tower. A hardware and software patent that is exclusively relevant to 3G mobile devices.
Apple has been the clear aggressor all along, and their patent claims are largely trollish and petty rather than valid technical patents. Please stop spreading disinformation.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Apple has repeatedly refused to license the patents and instead continues to just use them without paying. Was anyone actually surprised to see this happen? The word inevitable comes to mind. Not that I am particularly in love with the patent system, but Apple enjoys suing everyone else for patent violations and then they turn around and blatantly do it themselves. Someone at apple has been taking their stupid pills on the reg.