Apple And Google Finally End Patent Nuclear War: Settle All (Direct) Disputes
from the about-freaking-time dept
Apple and Google have been fighting a long patent battle, often by proxy, over smartphones. It's long been known that Steve Jobs -- a guy who once said: "Picasso had a saying: 'Good artists copy, great artists steal.' We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas" -- was absolutely furious that Android smart phones looked so much like the iPhone. That resulted in a series of patent battles that have wasted hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees for lots of different companies. That money could have gone towards greater innovation and competing in the marketplace, but instead it went to lawyers.In a surprise late Friday announcement, the two companies now claim they've settled all patent lawsuits directly between the two and will work together on patent reform (hmm...). They also note that "the agreement does not include a cross license." That last point is important, because it actually means that Apple's other lawsuits against Android device makers, such as Samsung, will continue.
This isn't a complete end to the smartphone patent wars, but it's at least a first step -- and hopefully a recognition on Apple's part that just suing everyone for patent infringement isn't, perhaps, the smartest strategy.
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: nuclear war, patents, smartphones
Companies: apple, google, motorola, samsung
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Next step disarmament
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
youtube ext blocking
in kUbuntu 14.4 in chromium doesn't like any extension exept ghostery and session manager.
in the last to months i had to disable every extension exept the to mentioned above.
a smal list of the extensions i had to disable.
Adblock
adbock for youtube
adblock +
do not track
flashblock
flashcontrol
tampermonkey
youtube center
youtube unblocker
being autistic is this as far to go as i can think right now
i live in the Netherlands (.nl)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Woohoo...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Even parasites have got to feed.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Just shows that patents don't work
Now Google/Motorola don't exactly have bad lawyers either. But the difference in lawyer quality makes much more money than the difference in patent quality.
Since the idea of patents was to provide an incentive for advancing science and technology and the current system rather advances lawyering, it would just be easier to cut out the middlemen and pay horrendous sums to the lawyers directly.
In that manner, technology firms do not get caught in the crosswinds that are basically a lottery where money is distributed randomly and lawyers take a premium off the redistribution.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
assumption
I always laugh at this assumption. You are suggesting that there is some magic amount of innovation that hasn't occurred as a result. There is no support for this, rather it's likely that the money spent on lawyers would instead be sitting in their cash reserves or perhaps being used to build another overwrought artsy-fartsy workspace. Neither Apple or Samsung are particularly short of cash to operate and do all the things that they want. There is no indication that the marketplace suffers because lawyers get paid.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: assumption
It's the innovation that doesn't happen for fear of being sued into oblivion by big players with a trove of bad patents and expensive lawyers looking to prove how awesome they are.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: assumption
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: assumption
All those millions upon millions of dollars in court and lawyer fees? All that is money that could have been used in R&D, but instead was flushed right down the drain and wasted in pointless legal battles.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: assumption
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
In a surprise late Friday announcement, the two companies now claim they've settled all patent lawsuits directly between the two and will work together on patent reform (hmm...).
May I second that hmmm?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Google or Motorola?
If it is Motorola / Apple that settled, it really doesn't mean much as Google kept the "good" mobile patents. Besides, Apple might be hoping not to start a patent war with Lenovo (which has thousands of patents NOT related to the mobile world). Who know how many patents that IBM sold to Lenovo that Apple is worrying that it might be CONSTRUED as infringing.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Legal fees are never "wasted money."
Money paid to lawyers is used by those lawyers to purchase goods and services from others. A dollar paid to a lawyer might then be paid to a yacht manufacturer (and thus support its workers), or to a luxury auto manufacturer (again, supporting its workers), or to a caviar packager, or to cocaine dealers, or to high-end restaurants, or to procurers of underaged sex workers, or to sellers of Viagra . . .
The list is endless. Legal fees represent money that enters the economy and that will be re-spent by each successive payee, providing a huge stimulus to our worldwide economy.
So, if you would like to do your part to help end hunger and poverty and deprivation, simply hire a lawyer, incur fees, and pay them!
"Lawyers! Better Than Shovel-Ready!"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]