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Google says rivals using patent litigation to undermine Android |
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David Drummond, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, in a blogpost, has explained, in no uncertain terms, the method to the madness behind all the patent litigation being witnessed by the company's hugely successful open source Android mobile operating system.  Drummond said that cause for this attack is the fact that Android has outdone all other smart phone operating systems, with over 550,000 Android devices activated every day through a network of 39 manufacturers and 231 carriers. The ugly underbelly to this success is “a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents.” Explaining how these companies are going about their concerted attack, Drummond said that they’re banding together to acquire Novell’s old patents (the “CPTN” group including Microsoft and Apple) and Nortel’s old patents (the “Rockstar” group including Microsoft and Apple), to ensure that Google “didn’t get them; seeking $15 licensing fees for every Android device; attempting to make it more expensive for phone manufacturers to license Android (which we provide free of charge) than Windows Phone 7; and even suing Barnes & Noble, HTC, Motorola, and Samsung.” “A smartphone might involve as many as 250,000 (largely questionable) patent claims, and our competitors want to impose a “tax” for these dubious patents that makes Android devices more expensive for consumers. They want to make it harder for manufacturers to sell Android devices. Instead of competing by building new features or devices, they are fighting through litigation,” Drummond said in a post on the Official Google Blog. “Patents were meant to encourage innovation, but lately they are being used as a weapon to stop it,” he said emphatically. “Fortunately, the law frowns on the accumulation of dubious patents for anti-competitive means — which means these deals are likely to draw regulatory scrutiny, and this patent bubble will pop.” Drummond pointed out that this anti-competitive strategy had escalated the cost of patents “way beyond what they’re really worth,” which was evident from the $4.5 billion winning bid for Nortel’s patent portfolio that was almost five times larger than its pre-auction estimate of $1 billion. Moreover, the Justice Department had asked the acquirers to alter the deal, since "as originally proposed, the deal would jeopardize the ability of open source software, such as Linux, to continue to innovate and compete in the development and distribution of server, desktop, and mobile operating systems, middleware, and virtualization products," the DOJ had observed. Drummond said as Google stays focused on its own business to make better products, “we thought it was important to speak out and make it clear that we’re determined to preserve Android as a competitive choice for consumers, by stopping those who are trying to strangle it.” He said Google was encouraged that the Department of Justice forced the group to license the former Novell patents on fair terms, and is looking into whether Microsoft and Apple acquired the Nortel patents for anti-competitive means. “We’re also looking at other ways to reduce the anti-competitive threats against Android by strengthening our own patent portfolio. Unless we act, consumers could face rising costs for Android devices — and fewer choices for their next phone,” he said. The battle lines between Google and rivals, and the open source community and pro-patent lobby couldn't be clearer.
Image: Courtesy Google |
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