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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?
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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).