Intellectual Ventures Sues Motorola Mobility For Infringement; Guess Who's Trying To Cause Trouble For Google?

from the ah,-the-fun-fights-of-billionaires dept

Thu, Oct 6th 2011 2:07pm — Mike Masnick

You can almost hear Intellectual Ventures' lawyers cackling with glee in announcing that they've filed their latest patent infringement lawsuit against Motorola Mobility -- the company that Google is buying for its patents. Clearly, this is a shot at Google. As for the patents in question, let's take a look:

7,810,144: File transfer system for direct transfer between computers
6,412,953: Illumination device and image projection apparatus comprising the device
7,409,450: Transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) packet-centric wireless point to multi-point (PTMP) transmission system architecture
7,120,462: Portable computing, communication and entertainment device with central processor carried in a detachable handset
6,557,054: Method and system for distributing updates by presenting directory of software available for user installation that is not already installed on user stastion
6,658,464: User station software that controls transport, storage, and presentation of content from a remote source

If that looks like an odd and random selection of patents, well, that's the idea. IV has its stacks upon stacks of patents, and they just rifle through them to find something -- anything -- that anyone they want to go after might infringe on. And, voila! open the cash register.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: patents
Companies: google, intellectual ventures, motorola mobility

20 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

fogbugzd (profile), 6 Oct 2011 @ 2:45pm

Google bought Motorala in large part because it gave them a war chest of patents to defend themselves against other cell phone OS producers such as Apple and Microsoft.

Unfortunately that type of defense is useless against patent trolls because non-producing entities by definition don't produce anything Motorola/Google can counter sue for. All IV has to do is keep throwing weak patents against the wall until a judge in East Texas lets one stick.

Getting a worthless patent or two invalidated doesn't really matter to IV because they have a lot more worthless patents to draw on. The real danger that they face is making enough big companies like Google mad at them that software patents get tossed out as invalid.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Bwendo (profile), 6 Oct 2011 @ 2:54pm

Patents
Flooding the market with so many patents as to make any case unworkable is part of the tactic too.
So contenders give up before even trying.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
:Lobo Santo (profile), 6 Oct 2011 @ 2:57pm

Re: Pish
Two Words: Ninja Attorneys.

I heard a rumor from an allegedly reliable source that the Googster totes has a couple Ninja Attorneys on retainer. If those guys(?) get the case, IVy-trollingston will not only lose, it will Quake (or is that Doom?) in fear!! (mwa-hahahahahah!)

So... yeah, no worries.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 6 Oct 2011 @ 3:08pm

Thank God Judge Ward retired 5 days ago (in East Texas).
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 6 Oct 2011 @ 3:09pm

Re:
That's bigger news than this article.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Richard (profile), 6 Oct 2011 @ 3:31pm

Intellectual Vultures
Why is it that I always read their name this way?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 6 Oct 2011 @ 3:54pm

Re: Intellectual Vultures
cognitive bias?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Austin (profile), 6 Oct 2011 @ 4:37pm

In layman's terms...
The patents are for...

- FTP, SAMBA, HTTP, SFTP, or even just a damn USB cable
- Projectors. Any kind of projector.
- Wifi routers. All of them.
- Any and every smartphone that includes a cradle or dock.
- The Apple App Store, the Android Market, Synaptic on Linux, any other "app store"
- Dropbox, the cloud in general.

Isn't there supposed to be some sort of test for, yanno, obviousness? Shouldn't ALL of these patents FAIL that test? Or prior art? Or just the "you've got to be shitting me" test in general?

I mean nevermind the lawsuit. Hell, nevermind the bad patents. In this case, if one patent examiner approved more than one of these patents, someone needs to either fire him, or move the examiner out of his cave to a new residence that has electricity. Seriously, half the issue here is the village IDIOTS working in the USPTO who couldn't take a 10-second glance at this (as I did) and see how blatantly obvious it is that these are BAD PATENTS and SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN GRANTED TO BEGIN WITH! To anyone! Ever!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
fogbugzd (profile), 6 Oct 2011 @ 5:58pm

Re: Re: Intellectual Vultures
>>cognitive bias?

Quite possibly, but honestly it is good to see the trolls come back to Capistrano. I was worried by the lack of trolling lately.

I think we really do need to trolls. I prefer the higher quality trolls that actually make valid points. They contribute to the quality of the discussion. I even value the feeble trolls that have dominated the traffic lately. Even the mindless and feeble trolls let us know that xPAA takes TD as enough of a threat that they are willing to give us some attention.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 6 Oct 2011 @ 6:07pm

Re:
Guess who's running IV? A former Microsoft executive. So is it a coincidence that now IV is suing Motorola/Google? I think not. IV seems to be Microsoft's patent troll division that they'll probably use more often from now on, against other companies, too so they stay "clean".
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 6 Oct 2011 @ 6:11pm

Re: In layman's terms...
I think the problem is that they get paid for patent ACCEPTED, so that's an incentive to accept as many as possible. They should change the system so they get paid for patents REJECTED.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 6 Oct 2011 @ 6:57pm

If tech companies hate [software/obvious hardware/etc] patents so much, why don't they all contribute to a fund that lobbies to eradicate them?

Surely this is a better long term strategy than continually wasting time year-over-year on these patent wars...

These companies are flush with cash, I'm pretty sure if say only ~50 of these companies contributed money to a generic fund this would not be shareholder-revolted.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 6 Oct 2011 @ 7:01pm

Re:
Publicly they might say they want patent reform. But the major players, the ones run mostly by lawyers, would rather the patent system get worse as long as they can say on top of the pile. They're only paying lipservice till they can tighten the noose around FOSS.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 6 Oct 2011 @ 7:34pm

Re: In layman's terms...
You are talking about a place where they approve patents on toast.

What did you really expect?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 6 Oct 2011 @ 7:35pm

Re: In layman's terms...
http://www.google.com/patents/about/6080436_Bread_refreshing_method.html?id=IpwDAAAAEBAJ
[ link to this | view in thread ]
illuminaut (profile), 6 Oct 2011 @ 7:40pm

Re: Re:
The problem is more that while a software-patent free world might work out better for them long-term, the short-term consequences would be unpredictable and risky. If you're used to think in terms of fiscal years it's an unacceptable risk to take.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 6 Oct 2011 @ 10:40pm

Re: Patents
if you try, in even the slightest way, you can find a previous patent or prior art. it just take a ton of money to defend.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Sean T Henry (profile), 7 Oct 2011 @ 5:49am

Re:
Google should start asking for the patents at hand in lieu of payment for fees by companies that do not produce anything. This way they will get "paid" instead of the company disappearing leaving the bill with the willing company.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Sean T Henry (profile), 7 Oct 2011 @ 6:10am

Re: Re: Patents
6,412,953: Illumination device and image projection apparatus comprising the device
Candle and hands - a device to projecting an image on a wall

7,810,144: File transfer system for direct transfer between computers
Luckly computers do not directly transfer files to each other they have something between them be it a router, media, or component in the computer but not the computer its self.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The eejit (profile), 7 Oct 2011 @ 6:11am

Re: Re: Pish
Then we will see id RAGE from IV. Or is that on IV?
[ link to this | view in thread ]