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Why You Can't Build Your Own Smartphone: Patents

Posted by timothy on from the hard-to-count-'em-all dept.

jfruh writes "In the mid-00s, more and more people started learning about Android, a Linux-based smartphone OS. Open source advocates in particular thought they could be seeing the mobile equivalent of Linux — something you could download, tinker with, and sell. Today, though, the Android market is dominated by Google and the usual suspects in the handset business. The reason nobody's been able to launch an Android empire from the garage is fairly straightforward: the average smartphone is covered by over 250,000 patents."

3 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. False by Keruo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Patents won't touch you if you make 1-10 units.
    Other manufacturers won't consider you as worthwhile to legislate against since you most likely won't make any profit from those devices sold.
    From US point of view, good luck getting your device FCC approved, that'll be cheap and fun process!

    --
    There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
    1. Re:False by pruss · · Score: 5, Interesting

      But the reality is that if someone only makes 1-10 units then the patent holder is exceptionally unlikely to even notice.

      That one can get away with breaking a law isn't an excuse for doing so.

      There was a time when I wanted to use an open source MPEG-4 player on our PalmOS devices at home. I actually got a patent license from MPEG LA, since there are no fees for under 100,000 units or so. I expressly told them that I'd just be doing this for personal use. They sent me the license agreements overnight. Twice a year, I've had had to report the number of units, so I duly reported one per installed build, each time I installed a build. I don't think they realized how absurdly costly this was for them. Too bad for them: I kind of hoped they'd say that with such a small number of units, they're fine with me doing it without a license.

  2. Re:Hard by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well a Spanish startup, Geeksphone, did so with 2 models.

    They probably would have succeeded, except their country is now in economic meltdown.

    So it *is* possible but not given the current financial climate that has seen Palm disappear and RIM and Nokia in a death spiral.