Current Mobile Patent Suits - Graphic of the Day | Hacker News Reader

Current Mobile Patent Suits - Graphic of the Day

blog.thomsonreuters.com

32 pointsColinWright18 comments

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Here's another rendering of the same thing:

http://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/MobileSuits.png

There may be errors, I gave myself 5 minutes to replicate it.

ADDED IN EDIT:

Thank you to the people who've got in touch.

1. I've fixed the omissions - thanks

2. I did it to see how clean and simple the graphic can be. The existing ones were either misleading and unhelpful, or seemed to be whizzy/technical for the sake of being whizzy/technical.

I like a single, simple, clean image.

FINAL EDIT: Now added the indication of who uses Google's Android OS

better i think.

it shows how aggressive is Microsoft.

Motorola are owned by Google right? Or is the part of Motorola that’s suing / being sued the bit they didn’t buy?

Not yet. There's still a good deal of stuff that needs to happen before the acquisition can proceed.

Nice. Just needs a color key.

Some indication of who sued first would be useful too.

The Reuters graphic intentionally confuses. Mike Bostock (D3.js creator) has made a much more clear graphic: http://bl.ocks.org/1153292

Agreed. By eye you can see 'components' are in the wrong places, can easily imagine better layouts with shorter, straighter paths.

No, that's the disappointing thing. It doesn't intentionally confuse, it just is far better for a square box versus Bostock's masterful creation. Sadly, Reuters sells images to people who only have little squares to put them in, and they don't have enough space to show the good version.

Apple really seems to enjoy suing people. So much for their old "we're indie and fighting the evil empire" mantra :/

All but one of those lines is bidirectional, and it doesn't indicate "who shot first", so it is quite possible those are all defensive suits.

Or Apple is a convenient target with lots of cash. Or, more likely, Apple feels like it really does own its IP and that it would be catastrophic to it's business to see hundreds of iPhone clones running around. Apple is also trying to jump into lawsuits they weren't named in for their develoers' sakes.

Just knowing how many lines are coming out of a place doesn't give knowledge of who is right or wrong. The stupid laws beget stupid law suits.

More interesting will be to see the outcomes. Apple doesn't generally like cross-licensing, so they may go all the way to verdict. If the suits were frivolous, we should find out.

In most (all?) of the cases listed in the graphic, apple is the one that started litigation, and then was countersued, this has nothing to do with apple being a "convenient target with lots of cash", nor are any of these suits "for their develoers' sakes".

The graphic would be much more interesting if we could see the indirect links targeting Google. I believe that patent suits targeting B&N and Samsung (a subset maybe) are really targeted toward Google.

If this is about mobile patent suits, why is Amazon included? I know Amazon pays Microsoft licensing to use Linux on their servers, but that has nothing to do with mobile.

for one i remember apple suing it for using appstore.

but there is no line for that

With regard to licensing, this graphic is incomplete. It would be interesting to see a thorough version.

Centuries ago, you would write that all paths lead to rome.

Today, all paths lead from Apple.

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