HTC Sues Apple Using Patents Obtained From Google Last Week | Hacker News Reader

HTC Sues Apple Using Patents Obtained From Google Last Week

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I think what they should do is just mutually agree to make a big bonfire, burn a couple billion in cash each, and then get back to business as usual.

Given that they don't brind much firewood (patents) to the bonfire, I'm sure Google will love that.

I think that's how Burning Man started.

Makes sense. The heads of these companies are on psychedelics!

Ouch. Why are we so humourless today?

Is there anyone not simultaneously suing and getting sued over patents? It's like a war zone where each company tries hard to screw over every other company in their space. Then they go collaborate on Web standards. If these were people instead of businesses you'd have to assume they had mental illnesses.

The worst thing is many investors who hold shares of one company also holds shares of the competitor, and hence they are spending money wildly to make their portfolio as a whole worth less.

> Is there anyone not simultaneously suing and getting sued over patents?

Yes. Google is getting sued lots but they are not suing anybody. I suppose selling (or giving??) a patent to HTC who then sues using it is sort of indirectly suing though.

I thought only Oracle was suing Google Is someone else suing Google?

Well according to a search for "sues google" there's also at least Skyhook, Paypal, Ebay, Zynga and Paul Allen's Trollco. I'd say the lawsuits from Apple and Microsoft count even though they are indirectly suing Google.

Umm... I think you read my question wrong. Who's not suing Google? :-)

Ah, finally a chance to use this service ...

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=who+is+suing+google

Hmm since when did my tablet grow a cursor? Are you using hacks? :)

Google's like that guy who says he's sick of rich douchebags driving their Porsches around and cutting everyone else off in traffic but then he wins the lottery and what do you know he goes out and buys a Porsche and finds that the superior handling, acceleration and compact chassis lends itself to exploiting gaps in traffic they would not have with their old Honda Accord.

It was but obvious that Google will start suing the moment they got their hands on patents that they can use to sue people with. So much for Do no evil :)

It's "Don't be evil" — a much less ambitious goal. Ordinary people do marginally evil things all the time without being thought of as being evil on the whole.

And it's a pretty weird morality where protecting yourself makes you, as a whole, "evil."

I don't see where Good or Evil enter into any of this.

Does Android/HTC infringe on some Apple patents? Maybe.

Does Apple infringe on some of these patents Google has given to HTC? Maybe.

Are the likely outcomes more favorable to Android/Google/HTC with Google having given HTC these patents? Almost certainly.

So that's how you justify Google's actions? By play of words?

In my eyes, Google is just a Microsoft wannabe.

That said, I do not think their current actions are in any way evil or immoral. In fact I would lose faith in Android if they weren't doing this.

So I wonder if this definition of suing (transferring a patent to a third party who uses it defensively) is evil to you, how evil is Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, etc?

I never said Apple Oracle or Microsoft are not evil but they never did either. Google is hypocrite here claiming to do no evil while suing others through a partner.

So in your morality hypocrisy trumps everything. Being a tiny bit evil and advocating against being evil is worse to you than actually being extremely evil and saying nothing?

Being evil while proclaiming to not do evil is lying. What credibility would you grant to a company that does it. And this is just one occurance. Claiming to be open when withholding source code to latest android releases, stealing content from publishers like yelp to boost its own local pages. Giving preferential treatment to its own sites/products over others in search results... the list is endless.

Sadly yes: the patent trolls get to sue, but because they have no products themselves (indeed, they have no nothing other than a legal shell and a few patent assets) they aren't sued back.

Amen brother

But businesses are made up of people. Lawyers work in the legal department. Web standards people work in the Web standards department. I have little doubt that reading news like this makes the Web standards people sad, but they still feel like their work is valuable in the space they occupy and carry on with their jobs.

I suppose I assume that the lawyers justify their work somehow, because nobody wants to think that what they do is inherently bad. I think buying up patents specifically to sue people is bad, but I imagine if I worked in the legal field I would feel that it's only fair to fight back.

Not quite: businesses (or corp's) are effectively made of groups of people. These particular groups seem to want to act more psychopathically / self-interested than an individual might -- think mobs or riots.

It's difficult to consider this an attack while, previously, Apple sued HTC.

Honestly, I don't know who started it, but this doesn't benefit anyone. Well, maybe some lawyers...

Agree that it's not an attack per se, it would appear to be a more aggressive form of defence though.

It'd be nice to see the end of commoditized patent holding. E.g. Only the creators of a technology can benefit from the patent process. The "proxied from a third party to sue a second party" without any original innovation is a pathetic puppet show.

Create or die.

I agree with the spirit of your post but realize that selling patents is one way inventors can realize value. If companies couldn't use them as commodities, their value might be diminished.

The trading may pose some downsides, but it's not all bad.

I thought so at first, but that just begs the question: So what if they're less valuable that way? The purpose of the patent system is not to maximize the monetary value of patents. I mean, the status quo makes patents less valuable than they would be if the government offered a pile of gold to patent-holders every five years, but that doesn't mean the government should offer them gold.

The question is, would patents still serve their purpose well enough under such a system? Would inventors be unduly discouraged from getting patents? That doesn't seem likely. Solo inventors would just sell a license to the patent rather than the patent itself. And the biggest deterrent for lone inventors has always been the expense of getting a patent in the first place. That wouldn't change.

After all, it seems Google bought Motorola for patents and attacking Apple and co'. I know, Google is not directly suing Apple, but the act of giving those patents to HTC constitutes to suing Apple.

Microsoft and Nokia are doing the same thing as Google with a company called Mosaid.

This lets Google and Microsoft sue other companies over patent issues without actually doing it themselves.

it seems to be the new style of patent warfare.

The Cold War proxy-war model applied to patent suits.

how does proxy war help? the one who is sued knows that the company who's suing them is just a proxy for XYZ

Interesting response. Are you suggesting that the Soviet Union was unaware that the Mujahadeen was getting weapons and training from the U.S., or that the United States didn't know where North Korea got their MiG-15s and who was flying them? I suppose that may have been true for a time, but it's not like the jig was up as soon as intelligence reports revealed the truth.

The real benefit of the proxy wars was that the level of indirection was believed to make an all-out nuclear conflict less likely, and that large chunks of the general population could be kept in the dark, unable to wrap their heads around "why we're over there".

But the liabilities are limited I guess?

Was it really "giving" or did they just get an arrangement to be able to use them "defensively" against other patent suits?

Likewise, Apple doesn't directly sue Google over Android, but does so indirectly through all the manufacturers right?

Isn't that because Android itself doesn't infringe but certain aspects of the Android phones or the way said manufacturer has implemented the software does infringe?

Not true. It's the android that infringes on the patents not the hardware.

Not just Motorola - Google gave HTC the patents they bought from Palm and OpenWave too. That is interesting to say the least - I hadn't heard of this kind of arrangement before.

If that's the case, it's hard to say that htc lost anything considering the patents were given to them. This all seems very cynical.

I don't know about cynical but it is unusual for sure - Google is showing huge amount of trust in selling what seem to be important 9 patents - HTC could in theory dump Android tomorrow for WP7 and go suing Samsung using those same patents for example. Or may be Google has some crafty term of sale that prohibits HTC from suing anyone using Android.

The other oddity is that those same patents are now off the table for any other Android OEM to use to sue Apple or Microsoft. Was HTC the weakest one and so Google felt giving them those patents was a balancing act and other vendors are having their own credible patents to not need these 9. We will never know I think.

If you're interested in these patent issues, you should add FOSS Patents (http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/) to your RSS reader.

Florian has the list of patents being asserted by HTC and some analysis of them at http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/09/these-are-patents-go...

Anyone have a brief description of the patents that are being thrown around here. It would be nice to see how "legit" they are.

It might make an interesting little website. PatentShootout.com (take it and run with it)

Wonder what was the price that was paid. Don't think they were given away free (as in beer), otherwise Google executives themselves would face lawsuits. Breach of fiduciary duty and all that.

Now, if Apple and HTC reach a cross-licensing agreement that includes these patents, could apple later sue another android manufacturer using them?

Depends what the agreement says but in theory yes.

Certainly once Apple have a license to these patents they lose any defensive/offensive capability they have in relation to Apple.

Possibly one of the terms of the sale of the patents (or licensing or whatever it is - a straight sale seems wrong to me, why would Google, who have a notoriously weak patent portfolio, sell part of it when they could protect HTC without actually losing the patent) is that any agreement has to relate to all devices running Android, not just HTC devices.

Do we know how much HTC bought these patents for?

Awesome. This obvious patent crap has to go. Unless real blood is shed the government will do nothing...

It's either 5 decades of patent of cold war or a few years of all out patent war, after which the major players will beg US authorities to change the law.

This is insane. So much money and time wasted over legal monopolies such as "multi function buttons", "dropdowns on a webpage", "rounded corners", etc, etc, etc.

Now even Google is dragged into this crap hole by moronic companies such as Oracle and Apple.

Oh no. I said something against Apple. (Unless there was something else objectionable)

It will be amusing to see how this is justified from people who have previously claimed Google has played no role in offensive patent warfare. I don't blame them for doing it. The system is what it is. Google has to arm their client-states with weapons at this point. Until the laws change they would be stupid not to.

Is this offensive patent warfare since HTC is merely countersuing? (serious question, I'd like to know the answer)

Hmm. I'm not sure how you could view this as an offensive move?

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