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Microsoft, Apple and Others Launch Huge Patent Strike at Android
New submitter GODISNOWHERE writes "Nortel went bankrupt in 2009. In 2011, it held an auction for its massive patent portfolio. The winners of the auction were Apple, Microsoft, Sony, RIM, and others, who bought the patents for $4.5 billion as a consortium named Rockstar Bidco. At the time, many people speculated those patents would be used against Google, who bid separately but lost. It turns out they were right. Rockstar has filed eight lawsuits in federal court targeting Google and Android device manufacturers. 'The complaint (PDF) against Google involves six patents, all from the same patent "family." They're all titled "associative search engine," and list Richard Skillen and Prescott Livermore as inventors. The patents describe "an advertisement machine which provides advertisements to a user searching for desired information within a data network. The oldest patent in the case is US Patent No. 6,098,065, with a filing date of 1997, one year before Google was founded. The newest patent in the suit was filed in 2007 and granted in 2011. The complaint tries to use the fact that Google bid for the patents as an extra point against the search giant.'"
... how is this a strike against Android?
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
Sue the best.
Apple, Microsoft, and Sony (nobody cares about RIM), three of the biggest names in technology. Three of the most influential and powerful companies in the world. Three companies that have historically been in fierce competition with one another.
And they had to gang up on Google.
What does that say about how much they fear Google?
Apple, Microsoft, Sony, RIM, and others, who bought the patents for $4.5 billion as a consortium named Rockstar Bidco
I presume it's not, but that should be illegal collusion and an anti-trust violation.
beat them in the courts.
Broken system. Too much politics, too much backstabbing, too much use of patents to tear down competitors instead of just arranging a reasonable fee.
Abolish software and "business method" patents. They're not *things*, just ideas. They're not what patents were *created* to protect.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Those who can, innovate.
Those who can't, litigate.
Sorry, Apple, but the Woz was right when he explained concern over your company. And I've not really seen Microsoft innovate itself out of a paper bag in years... But that's ok, they'll make sure they're on the gravy train by attempting to collect royalties every Android device out there...
Google must have more than a few basic patents too, just all of block them in most of their products on internet/mobile and bring the whole industry to an halt until the legal system regarding patents stop being so badly screwed.
To save people the trouble of finding these:
http://patents.justia.com/inventor/richard-prescott-skillen
I really have to wonder what the people who started the patent system would have thought of this kind of thing. Something tells me this is not what they had in mind. I thought the whole idea was to protect the inventors. If a company goes bankrupt, they really don't need protection, so the patent should go into the public domain. If an individual is granted a patent, they should either have to do something with it in the allotted time, or lose it. Patents were not meant to be used as a way to sue companies as a means of making profit. Nor should massive corporations be able to use them as an Armageddon device against their competitors. I know my post sounds naive and that it's not that simple. But this is just not how the system was intended to work.
I think it is safe to assume Google saw this coming. Which means they believe it will cost less than 4.4 billion to win (I assume their ability to serve ads, and android, both are not something they will willingly give up on).
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I always believed that the purpose of intellectual property to was to better ensure that the creator(s) of the thing had exclusive rights to their creations, ensuring their investments of blood, sweat and tears has a better chance of a return. But that's not what happens is it? No. What we have is an industry. And with any industry, we experience dehumanizing effects.
What's the solution? We can write an increasingly complex set of laws to address specific predatory behaviors such as patent trolling. That won't solve the problems of giant industry players from fighting each other like giant Japanese monsters on the streets of Tokyo. The real solution?
Disallow all intellectual property transfers. If you didn't create it, you can't own it. Then it reverts to its original purpose and intent and virtually removes all industrial activity. But what happens when the creators, authors and companies die? Does all that valuable intellectual property just vanish in a puff of smoke? Well? Yes. I would hope so.
Which is so painfully obvious the phonebook is prior art.
You go look under plumber and with the listing you see advertising.
Painfully obvious in hindsight. Why was it patented before google came into existence?
While I tend to agree with you in this case, if you want google to win the lawsuit you have to answer the above question satisfactorily.
Imagine the Hammer was invented after patent laws. obvious in hindsight. simple. But eminently patentable as a method for driving with more force than banging it with a rock.
here one prior art would be the yellow pages. But it lacked the force of a data base search. the search terms in the yellowpages were pre-formed. so less forceful.
the fact that was not an obvious improvement is that at the time Google was formed, Yahoo was not a search engine per se. It was a curated set of pre-formed categories like a yellow pages.
another prior art would be Alta Vista and Overture. They were packing the top of the search results list with advertiser's listings. so here we do have advertising using a data base.
But at that time they were not using a user profile to make the listing adaptive. SO less force.
Early google was simmilar but the ads were shifted to the right column not intermixed. Later on Google became adaptive.
So in 1997 it's not yet obvious since others with the means to do so before google did not do so.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
More money is spent on litigating patents than on creating the inventions. Wish I could find the link now, but the crossover was reached a number of years ago. So much for the idea that the purpose of patents is to foster innovation.
Any decent defence attorney will find little trouble pointing out that all pre-1997 search engines are prior art, since a search engine has always been an advertising machine. If I typed into Alta Vista, in 1996, a search for "books" and came up with any site related to books, Alta Vista has acted in the role of an advertising machine in directing me to that site.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I really miss Groklaw days like this
Everybody better let Rockstar Games know that you think they're assholes for this crap.
Cause that trademark and brand damage, watch the real Rockstar file a huge suit in return regarding trademarks.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Google just has to say 'ineligible subject matter'. Google will also lose it's own patents, but the competition can't outdo them so Google's own patents don't matter.