stories filed under: "smartphones"

The Death Rattle For Blackberry: Once Again, Markets Change Very Quickly

from the from-dominant-to-dead-in... dept

Fri, Sep 20th 2013 5:35pm — Mike Masnick

There's plenty of attention going to the news of Blackberry's awful financial performance and massive layoffs, with many people declaring the company at death's door (meaning it's likely someone will buy off the pieces sometime soonish). Just a few weeks ago, we wrote about the similar effective death of Nokia, highlighting just how much the mobile ecosystem had changed in just a few years. We showed the following chart from Asymco to make the point about just how much the market had changed, and how far Nokia had fallen in just a few years:

That same chart, obviously, applies to RIM as well. Though since RIM (which became Blackberry) had a rather different business model, it's not as noticeable when you're just looking at profit share, which that chart shows. Instead, the Washington Post shows an even more telling image, just looking at mobile OS marketshare:

The shorthand: markets change. Often in big, surprising ways. A few years back, if you looked at corporate America, it would be almost unfathomable that anyone would unseat RIM/Blackberry. It was everywhere in the corporate market. You could talk to people who referred generically to all mobile phone devices at "Blackberries." That's how ubiquitous the brand had become.

But, then, a variety of things changed. It wasn't because of any anti-trust efforts. It was because of basic competition, which resulted in a somewhat surprising change in how things worked. First, the iPhone came on the scene, and that was a really compelling device. No, it didn't have the nice keyboard, or certain features that Blackberry users loved (liked BBM), but it was really great in so many ways... so people started to want to just use that for both personal and work purposes.

And then the magic shift. As Tim Lee notes, it was the bottom up demand from users in the workplace that completely changed the market.

But the pace of innovation in the consumer smartphone market was so rapid that employees became dissatisfied with their BlackBerrys. And eventually, the advantages of iOS and Android devices became so obvious that corporate IT departments were forced to capitulate. They began supporting iPhones and Android devices even though doing so was less convenient.

BlackBerry eventually realized that it would need to compete effectively in the consumer market if it wanted to survive. But building consumer-friendly mobile devices wasn't its engineers' strong suit. And by the time BlackBerry released a modern touchscreen phone in 2010, three years after the iPhone came on the market, it had a huge deficit to make up.

Folks who study the Innovator's Dilemma will likely recognize this as a classic case of that in action. You have a new upstart, that gets mocked and pooh poohed by the existing players. In the business world, very few people took the iPhone (or Android) seriously. After all, RIM totally dominated the market, and it was entirely top-down, with companies purchasing huge contracts. Plus, the Blackberry had so many features really focused on the business users that the iPhone felt like "a toy."

But that really is the secret to tremendously disruptive innovation. The first versions are almost always mocked as "toys." It leads the dominant player to ignore them or mock them. And then the bottom up tidal wave takes them by complete surprise. The "toys" get better at business tasks, and even if they're not as good as the Blackberry, they're good enough for most business use cases, and the pressure mounts to ignore the top down process and have companies support iPhones and Android phones. And, by the time Blackberry tries to catch up, they're way, way behind. It's the same story of disruptive innovation that has happened time and time again.

This pattern is almost undeniable. In retrospect it always looks obvious, but companies almost always miss this. They tend to think -- incorrectly -- that they can "spot" the disruptive innovations ahead of time. Or, barring that, they believe they have such a dominant position that if something appears to be disruptive, they can just copy it and "catch up" leveraging their position in the market to do so. But that's rarely the case. Almost every time, by the time they realize what's going on, it's way too late. When they finally get to the market, they're seen as also-rans, way behind the times. They're often going after a moving target. The successful early innovators have already adapted and changed and innovated some more, while the big entrants are still trying to compete with last year's model.

It's happened before and it'll happen again. It's the nature of innovation. It has nothing to do with patents (RIM's got tons of those and has used them aggressively at times -- look where that got them). It has nothing to do with antitrust issues. It has everything to do with the nature of innovation and competition.

Filed Under: antitrust, bottom up, innovator's dilemma, markets, patents, smartphones
Companies: blackberry, rim

26 Comments

Steve Jobs Is 'Big Brother' And Smartphone Users Are 'Zombies,' According To NSA Cell Phone Tapping Presentation

Privacy

from the the-NSA-hates-you-for-your-freedom dept

Mon, Sep 9th 2013 2:19pm — Tim Cushing

Just in case you're not convinced the intelligence community views the public (American or otherwise) as little more than exploitable data generators, two paragraphs from Der Spiegel's full article on the NSA's cell phone exploits should do the trick.

The first deals with former NSA boss Michael Hayden and his iPhone experience.

Michael Hayden has an interesting story to tell about the iPhone. He and his wife were in an Apple store in Virginia, Hayden, the former head of the United States National Security Agency (NSA), said at a conference in Washington recently. A salesman approached and raved about the iPhone, saying that there were already "400,000 apps" for the device. Hayden, amused, turned to his wife and quietly asked: "This kid doesn't know who I am, does he? Four-hundred-thousand apps means 400,000 possibilities for attacks."

What most people would view as a feature list, the NSA views as a way to turn a person's phone into an informant. What Hayden references goes much deeper than simply grabbing location data and call records, something most intelligence and law enforcement agencies can already obtain without a warrant.

In the basest terms, the NSA wants to be inside your phone and will do anything to get there, but rather than follow that particular idiom into a dead end filled with rapey metaphors, we'll move on to the part where the NSA blames you for creating such attractive data.

In three consecutive transparencies, the authors of the presentation draw a comparison with "1984," George Orwell's classic novel about a surveillance state, revealing the agency's current view of smartphones and their users. "Who knew in 1984 that this would be Big Brother …" the authors ask, in reference to a photo of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. And commenting on photos of enthusiastic Apple customers and iPhone users, the NSA writes: "… and the zombies would be paying customers?"

No doubt whoever put together this presentation was pretty pleased with applying the Big Brother epithet to a private corporation. Without a doubt, many tech companies gather a ton of data on their users. Pre-installed apps routinely ask for permission to use location data and nearly every website visited gathers that along with anything else they can pick up. But private corporations aren't Big Brother because, for one thing, they're not the government. Apple can't spy on you and then use that data to imprison you. Only the government can.

Not that the NSA wants any tech company to start gathering less data. It loves the data and it loves being able to shake down these companies for their collections whenever deemed necessary. Referring to customers as "zombies" is the sort of thing you'd expect from neckbearded hipsters and other self-proclaimed individualists who tend take a dim view of any popular activity. It's rather jarring to hear the lingo deployed in a government intelligence agency presentation.

A private individual referring to iPhone customers as "zombies" is one thing. The NSA doing it is quite another. People who don't take an active effort to protect their information are being labeled as sub-human by a government agency. If these smartphones users don't care about the data they're leaking, then they really don't have an "expectation of privacy" to be steamrolled. That's the argument. As Der Spiegel puts it, the agency is arguing that the smartphone-buying public is "complicit in its own surveillance."

But they aren't, as one recent decision on acquiring cell phone location data without a warrant pointed out:

People buy cell phones to communicate with others, to use the Internet, and for a growing number of other reasons. But no one buys a cell phone to share detailed information about their whereabouts with the police.

The agency clearly feels that if the data is willingly being produced by cell phone users, it should have access. By reducing smartphone users to "zombies" and painting cell phone manufacturers as "Big Brother," the NSA is dehumanizing its targets. These aren't people -- they're just data producing entities, too brainless to be bothered with niceties like piviacy and security.

Filed Under: nsa, nsa surveillance, smartphones, zombies

37 Comments

Canonical Goes Big In Attempt To Crowdfund Exclusive Ubuntu Phone

Innovation

from the real-time-market-research dept

Mon, Jul 22nd 2013 11:17am — Mike Masnick

It's no secret that Mark Shuttleworth, the CEO of Canonical, maker of Ubuntu Linux, has very strongly embraced the mobile ecosystem as the future. Back in May, he famously "closed" bug 1 listed for Ubuntu, which was "Microsoft has a majority market," declaring that this was no longer true, thanks to iOS and Android (mainly Android).

Android may not be my or your first choice of Linux, but it is without doubt an open source platform that offers both practical and economic benefits to users and industry. So we have both competition, and good representation for open source, in personal computing.

Even though we have only played a small part in that shift, I think it's important for us to recognize that the shift has taken place. So from Ubuntu's perspective, this bug is now closed.

This came a few months after Canonical had announced that it was launching Ubuntu for mobile platforms back at MWC.

Now they're taking it up a notch with an incredibly ambitious crowdfunding campaign on IndieGogo, trying to raised $32 million in one month, for an exclusive new hardware device, the Ubuntu Edge, which will only be available to backers of the project (if it gets funded). The video Shuttleworth put together is worth watching: Basically, they're trying to build the ultimate smartphone, and they appear to have rethought a few key design elements, including using sapphire crystal for the screen, rather than easily cracked glass. The software will work with Android, so you wouldn't have to totally do without Android, or its vast developer community. It's definitely an interesting campaign. The idea isn't to be "in the smartphone business," but rather to set a new high bar that will push others (and, of course, to encourage more people to use Ubuntu, both for mobile and desktop). As Shuttleworth notes, they're not going to be selling any more of these outside of the IndieGoGo campaign, though they may do similar crowdfunding campaigns in the future with the goal of continuing to drive the market forward. It's a fascinating strategy: if the rest of the world isn't innovating fast enough, lead the way yourself with the express intent that others will follow and help make your software more valuable in the process.

One other interesting tidbit: they set up the campaign so that if people bid on the first day, they can get the phone for $600, or $230 less than it is throughout the rest of the campaign. The campaign shot through half a million very quickly and is still going up from there, but I wonder if it will slow down a bit after the first day and the price goes up.

If this project reaches $32 million, it will more than triple the most successful crowdfunding project to date, the Pebble smartwatch, which raised over $10 million. But, this is exactly the kind of project that crowdfunding was made for -- because it really is investing in a somewhat risky project, while also acting as a form of market research. People who are buying into this are buying into the vision -- which is definitely a risk. The phone hasn't been built yet. All the imagery are renderings, rather than prototypes. And, you never know how the execution will turn out. Personally, I'd rather see and feel a phone before I shell out $600 or $800 for the device, but for people will to support the basic idea of advancing mobile computing, it appears that many see it as a worthwhile contribution towards that goal, whether or not the device itself turns out to be worth it.

It's quite impressive to see how quickly they've brought in so much money -- and it will really say something about the hunger for moving the space forward if they can get to $32 million. Of course, even if it doesn't reach the $32 million goal, the project is clearly successful on multiple levels. As we've noted in the past, crowdfunding projects that don't reach their goals are not "failures." They're smart market research at work. If there isn't a big enough market for these phones, Canonical just saved itself a ton of money by not going ahead with the actual production. And, at the same time, they still get a ton of free publicity for the mobile software... So whether or not this project hits its goal, it's crowdfunding done right.

Filed Under: android, crowdfunding, mark shuttleworth, market research, pushing the envelope, smartphones, ubuntu
Companies: canonical

41 Comments

Anyone Traveling Into The UK Can Have Their Phones Seized And Data Downloaded Without Cause

Computers

from the the-old-rights-are-the-new-luxuries dept

Tue, Jul 16th 2013 4:48am — Tim Cushing

An independent review of the UK's anti-terrorism laws has found that the British "border patrol" functions much like ours when it comes to electronics. If you're bringing it across the border, it can be seized, searched and the data retained indefinitely.

Officers use counter-terrorism laws to remove a mobile phone from any passenger they wish coming through UK air, sea and international rail ports and then scour their data.

The blanket power is so broad they do not even have to show reasonable suspicion for seizing the device and can retain the information for “as long as is necessary”.

Data can include call history, contact books, photos and who the person is texting or emailing, although not the contents of messages.

UK police officers are also authorized to do this to UK citizens, although they are limited to seizing the phone and downloading information only after making an arrest. The border control officers have no such limitations. Scotland Yard, which is in charge of the UK's counterterrorism efforts, spells out travelers' rights this way:

Under the Terrorism Act 2000 a person may be detained and questioned for up to nine hours to determine if that individual is a person concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism as outlined in the Act.

Any person being detained can have their electronics (and contained data) seized. Their data is retained even if no charges are pressed.

Under the Act, police or border staff can question and even hold someone while they ascertain whether the individual poses a terrorism risk. But no prior authorization is needed for the person to be stopped and there does not have to be any suspicion. It means a police officer can stop any passenger at random, scour their phone and download and retain data, even of the individual is then immediately allowed to proceed.

David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of the UK's anti-terrorism policies, says he expects to "raise concerns" during his annual review. That's nice of him, but he seems to be a little too comfortable publicly espousing the "company line."

Mr Anderson said: “Information downloaded from mobile phones seized at ports has been very useful in disrupting terrorists and bringing them to justice.

“But ordinary travellers need to know that their private information will not be taken without good reason, or retained by the police for any longer than is necessary.”

One can easily see where this is headed. Anderson will raise "concerns," which will be addressed by redefining terms like "good reason" and "necessary." That is, if the UK's border protection continues to align with the United States model. Anderson believes this unchecked power is a "useful tool" in the fight against terrorism, and as such, is unlikely to raise severe objections to its continued use.

Even the statements from Scotland Yard defending this tactic have an eerie familiarity.

As with any power to detain an individual it is used appropriately and proportionally and is always subject to scrutiny by an independent reviewer of UK anti-terror laws.

Yes, that's right. Here in the US we also have nothing to fear. Everything the NSA, FBI, DHS, CBP and other acronymed agencies do under the guise of "fighting terrorism" is completely above board, subject to rigorous oversight and 100% legal. It only seems like an intrusive violation of privacy and an abuse of basic civil liberties, something that governments should be protecting us from rather than subjecting us to.

And as for that "independent review," it seems as though Anderson is already at least halfway in agreement with Scotland Yard on the perceived necessity of these policies, something that doesn't bode well for international travelers.

Filed Under: computers, seizures, smartphones, uk

38 Comments

UK Mobile Operator 3UK Filtering New Class Of 'Mature Content', Including Political Satire

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the mature-content dept

Tue, Jan 15th 2013 11:51pm — Glyn Moody

Smartphones have some big advantages: they offer considerable computing power in a highly-portable form, and are available at prices that allow a broad spectrum of users to get online easily. But as we reported last year, there's a big downside, too, one that's all-the-more dangerous for being invisible to most people: overblocking of sites caused by opt-out "child protection filters" applied by some mobile operators to their Internet feed.

Here's yet another worrying example of that problem, this time involving the UK operator 3UK, pointed out by Nick Rothwell. Pride's Purge is a Web site described by its creator Tom Pride as "an irreverent look at UK politics". As he recently discovered, it's also blocked by 3UK's child protection filter. He contacted the company on Twitter, pointing out that Pride's Purge was not a porn site or anything similar, and this is what it replied:

We don't just block adult websites, websites with mature content may also be censored.

So it now seems that there is a category of material called "mature content" that is distinct from "adult content", and that is also blocked by child protection filters, at least on 3UK's network. Worryingly, political satire seems to be regarded as an example of "mature content", and therefore unsuitable for children under 18. In fact, the censorship is even worse, as Pride explains: it's not blocked for just the under-18s. It's blocked for anyone who hasn't proven to [3UK] they are over 18 -- and that means you will have to give your full identity to 3UK before they allow you to enter this site.

Which means 3UK now officially regard political satire as porn -- and are censoring it in exactly the same way.
This very broad, default censorship is disturbing for at least two reasons. First, because many people will be unaware that this kind of "mature content" censorship is taking place at all, and therefore won't ask for it to be stopped. And secondly, even if they are aware, the fact that asking for the filter to be lifted could be seen as tantamount to wanting to access porn -- something that many will understandably be reluctant to have noted down on their Internet access record -- means that they will simply put up with a limited feed. And so the creeping, silent censorship of the mobile Internet not only continues, but probably gets worse in the absence of any significant pushback against it.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: filtering, satire, smartphones, uk
Companies: 3uk

32 Comments

HTC And Apple Settle Patent Dispute; Perhaps Tim Cook Realizes Patent Fights Are A Waste

Patents

from the one-would-help dept

Mon, Nov 12th 2012 3:21am — Mike Masnick

While the Apple patent disputes with Samsung and Motorola seem to get most of the publicity, Apple's first patent lawsuit against an Android phonemaker was against HTC, who quickly sued back. However, over the weekend, the two companies announced a settlement in which they're cross-licensing all of their patents to each other for a period of ten years. While the full details are secret, all of the indications are that HTC is paying Apple, but not a huge amount. HTC has said that it won't have "an adverse material impact" on its financials. While HTC remains a smaller player than Samsung, one hopes that this is actually a sign that Tim Cook has realized that Steve Jobs' infatuation with killing Android in court is not a productive strategy. This, of course, won't end many of the other patent fights around smartphones, but hopefully it shows that Apple has become less ridiculously "religious" about fighting in court, rather than focusing on the marketplace.

Filed Under: android, patents, settlement, smartphones, tim cook, waste
Companies: apple, htc

54 Comments

There Are 250,000 Active Patents That Impact Smartphones; Representing One In Six Active Patents Today

Patents

from the patent-thicket dept

Thu, Oct 18th 2012 8:28am — Mike Masnick

A few years back we created a graphic to highlight the ridiculous patent thicket around smartphones. It really just highlights some, though not all, of the litigation concerning patents related to smartphones.

That image is a bit out of date, with some cases settled, others completed, and many more filed, of course. Note the lack of anything between Samsung and Apple for example. But, of course, patents in litigation are just one aspect of a patent thicket. Plenty of patents are used just to demand licensing fees, but are never actually used in litigation. And plenty of patents don't show up in litigation at all, but can still represent part of the problem of the thicket.

A new analysis shows just how insane the patent thicket is today. Done by "defensive" patent aggregator RPX (they try to position themselves as the "good" version of Intellectual Ventures), the estimate is that a stunning250,000 active patents today impact smartphones. 250,000. As the article notes that's one in six active patents today -- and for an industry that is certainly less than 1% of US GDP. As a comparison, the pharma industry, often put forth (inaccurately, in my opinion) as an area where patents make sense, has accounted for a little over 6% of US patents over the past 15 years. Also, there's this:

... in the pharmaceutical industry, there are approximately 46.8 patents per every 1,000 jobs, whereas in the computer and peripherals equipment sector, there are 277.5 patents per 1,000 jobs. Even the semiconductor industry, known for its highly complex products, has a patent/job ratio of 111.6 patents per 1,000 jobs -- approximately 40% the rate of patents to jobs as the computer and peripherals market.

It definitely appears that there's something of a "bubble" going on around smartphone patents -- which is what happens when you have a hot emerging area, combined with ridiculously broad patents. It also makes for an astounding minefield for anyone new who wants to enter the space, especially if you don't have a massive war chest to license or fight in court.

Filed Under: patent thicket, patents, smartphones

43 Comments

Jeff 'One Click' Bezos Once Again Concerned About Patents

Patents

from the speak-out dept

Wed, Oct 17th 2012 3:12pm — Mike Masnick

About a dozen years ago, Amazon's Jeff Bezos (taking a fair amount of criticism for his one-click patent) helped fund a project called BountyQuest, which offered up prize money for those who were able to bust bogus patents. To his credit, the first patent they put forth was Bezos' own one-click patent -- except then very little happened, and BountyQuest faded away. While it has occasionally used its own patents (such as suing B&N over that one-click patent), Amazon tends to be on the receiving end of tons of ridiculous patent lawsuits, leading Bezos to speak out about the broken patent system yet again in an interview with the UK publication Metro:

"Patents are supposed to encourage innovation and we’re starting to be in a world where they might start to stifle innovation. Governments may need to look at the patent system and see if those laws need to be modified because I don’t think some of these battles are healthy for society. I love technology, I love invention, I like rapid change, and really it’s the golden age of wireless devices and mobile devices."

I'd argue that the "starting to" understates where we are in this process. There's significant evidence that the problem has been around for a long, long time already. Of course, I'm curious just what kind of legislation Bezos thinks is right. Having his voice added to the debate on patents certainly would be helpful, given how so many in Congress still seem to think that there isn't a real problem here.

Filed Under: jeff bezos, patent reform, patents, smartphones
Companies: amazon

10 Comments

NY Times Takes On Our Broken Patent System

Patents

from the that's-a-patent dept

Mon, Oct 8th 2012 11:46am — Mike Masnick

Well, this is nice to see. Charles Duhigg and Steve Lohr at the NY Times have a nice long piece highlighting just how broken the patent system is today. It kicks off with an anecdote of the type of story we hear about all the time: where a startup innovator gets threatened by a patent holder (in this case, not a troll, but a larger company), and the lawsuit effectively kills the startup. Even though it actually won in court, after spending an astounding $3 million fighting the lawsuit, the company was basically out of money... and was forced to sell itself to the company who had sued it, knowing that it still faced another five patent lawsuits. That's not a unique story. The company who sued, Nuance, defended its actions in the articles with this line of pure crap:

“Our responsibility is to follow the law,” said Lee Patch, a vice president at Nuance. “That’s what we do. It’s not our fault if some people don’t like the system.”

No. "Following the law" does not include shaking down competitors in your space, taking them to the brink of bankruptcy and then getting them to sell to you at firesale prices.

Perhaps more interesting in the article is the talk about Apple's awakening on how powerful patents could be used as a weapon against others, all stemming from its legal fight with Creative Technologies over a ridiculously broad patent for a digital music player. Rather than fight Creative, Apple just paid the company $100 million to go away. At the time, we wrote about how unfortunate it was that the company who succeeded in the market basically had to pay off the company who couldn't compete. But what we didn't realize was that it also turned Apple into a vociferous patent-hungry beast. The NY Times report notes that, right after this, Steve Jobs made it clear to his staff that Apple now needed to "patent everything."

Soon, Apple’s engineers were asked to participate in monthly “invention disclosure sessions.” One day, a group of software engineers met with three patent lawyers, according to a former Apple patent lawyer who was at the meeting.

The first engineer discussed a piece of software that studied users’ preferences as they browsed the Web.

“That’s a patent,” a lawyer said, scribbling notes.

Another engineer described a slight modification to a popular application.

“That’s a patent,” the lawyer said.

Another engineer mentioned that his team had streamlined some software.

“That’s another one,” the lawyer said.

[....] The disclosure session had yielded more than a dozen potential patents when an engineer, an Apple veteran, spoke up. “I would like to decline to participate,” he said, according to the lawyer who was at the meeting. The engineer explained that he didn’t believe companies should be allowed to own basic software concepts.

Unfortunately, very few companies seem willing to take a stand on this, even as many, many engineers feel the way that last engineer feels. I spend a lot of time with engineers in Silicon Valley, and I have trouble thinking of any who think the patent system is a good thing.

Apple's former General Counsel, Nancy Heinen, has a good quote in the article highlighting part of the problem:

"Think of the billions of dollars being flushed down the toilet... When patent lawyers become rock stars, it’s a bad sign for where an industry is heading,."

It's a very bad sign, but there seems to be little appetite by anyone to do anything to fix the wider problem. And despite Apple's foray into being a massive patent warrior, attacking tons of other companies, it still hasn't occurred to many people just how broken the system remains. The NY Times piece spends some time looking at Patent 8,086,604, an Apple patent issued last year, which many refer to as the Siri patent, as it covers a "universal interface for retrieval of information in a computer system." Basically, a way to search multiple databases at once. As a separate companion piece to the full article highlights, that patent was rejected 8 times before the examiner was "worn down" and approved it, despite no meaningful changes in the language.

See all those red dots? Those are times the patent got rejected. See the green dot? That's when it got approved. The black dot that follows right after the green dot? That's when Apple started suing with it. The NY Times even gets patent examiners to admit that their process is more or less random, quoting one admitting that he doesn't really have enough time to "get it right every time" as well as a former patent examiner who notes:

"If you give the same application to 10 different examiners, you'll get 10 different results..."

That's not a functioning system. It's the opposite. It's a lottery... where the "winners" get to take billions of dollars away from actual innovation. It's becoming a national disgrace.

Filed Under: patents, siri, smartphones, software
Companies: apple, creative technologies, nuance, samsung, vlingo

40 Comments

Google Launches Patent Attack On Apple In A Disappointing First For The Company

Patents

from the double-standards dept

Mon, Aug 20th 2012 10:33am — Mike Masnick

For years, despite being the defendant in tons of patent suits, and despite having a decent patent portfolio of its own, Google had never gone on the offensive with its patents against others. With the purchase of Motorola Mobility, it inherited an ongoing court case against Apple, which was unceremoniously dumped by Judge Posner. However, now there's news that Motorola Mobility has gone to the ITC to seek an injunction against Apple for the iPhone, iPad and some of its computers as well. Filing at the ITC can only lead to an injunction, rather than monetary damages, but the threat of an injunction is pretty big no matter what, and can often force a company to pay up.

What's disappointing here is that, even though this is coming from the Motorola side of things, as far as I can tell, it's the first time that Google itself could be described as a patent aggressor. For a company that had been coming out vocally about just how broken the patent system was, and which seemed to be fighting the good fight on stopping such abuses of patents to block competition, this is disappointing.

Yes, it's typical for companies, as they get bigger, older and less innovative, to start becoming patent aggressors, but Google had kept away from doing so for a long time, and certainly appeared, publicly, to have no interest in going down this road. Combined with the company's recent decision to cave on copyright issues as well, it seems that Google is taking some dangerous steps around copyright and patent law -- both of which may go against its own long-term best interests.

Filed Under: android, injunctions, ios, itc, patents, smartphones
Companies: apple, google, motorola mobility

117 Comments

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12:09	Alabama Speed Trap Town's PD Called Out On Its Bullshit By Nearby Sheriff, Limps On Without Most Of Its Officers (17)
10:45	Senator Klobuchar's Next Unconstitutional Speech Control Bill: The NUDGE Act (37)
10:40	Daily Deal: The Complete 2022 Microsoft Office Master Class Bundle (0)
09:33	Nonprofit Forced To Delete Thousands Of Court Documents Obtained With A Fee Waiver Because PACER Is Greedy And Stupid (19)
05:45	Judge And Jury Say Sarah Palin Failed To Prove 'Actual Malice' In Defamation Case Against The NY Times (41)
Tuesday
20:09	DC Comics Goes To UK High Court Over Trademark Granted To Unilever For 'Wonder Mum' (7)
15:57	Some Senators Are Freaking Out Because The White House Is Pitching Some Extremely Minor Police Reforms (26)
13:30	Techdirt Podcast Episode 311: EARN IT Is Still Bad (5)

The Death Rattle For Blackberry: Once Again, Markets Change Very Quickly

from the from-dominant-to-dead-in... dept

Steve Jobs Is 'Big Brother' And Smartphone Users Are 'Zombies,' According To NSA Cell Phone Tapping Presentation

from the the-NSA-hates-you-for-your-freedom dept