Both Microsoft and Apple have been going after Google’s Android OS,
with Microsoft signing patents deals with a number of Android smartphone
manufacturers and Apple suing the popular Android device makers like
Samsung and HTC.
Google has been pretty quiet on the whole situation , until now,
Google’s David Drummond who is the companies Senior Vice President and
Chief Legal Officer, has posted a blog post attacking, Apple, Microsoft
and Oracle.
The article has the title ‘When patents’ attack Android’, and it
makes for interesting reading, and David Drummond mentions the recent
Nortel Patents which were acquired by the companies recently.
But Android’s success has yielded something else: a hostile,
organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other
companies, waged through bogus patents.
They’re doing this by 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
make sure 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. Patents were meant to encourage innovation, but lately they are
being used as a weapon to stop it.
The various legal cases between Apple, Microsoft and Android device
manufacturers have become a lot more common lately, we have certainly
covered a few here on the site, and expect to see quite a few more over
the next 12 months.
You can read the full article over at the Google Blog. |