The mobile patent mess may get worse [LWN.net]

The "Unwired View" site has come to a worrisome conclusion based on Motorola's quarterly earnings call and a conference keynote by CEO Sanjay Jha: Motorola may start demanding patent royalties from other Android handset makers. "The discussion above was solely about Android, and how Motorola can differentiate from other players who are already doing better - like HTC and Samsung. One of the key points to win against competition, according to Sanjay Jha, are Motorola's patents. Used not only defensively - to avoid paying royalties on its Android handsets, but also offensively. To collect royalties from other Android device makers." Needless to say, that would not help the situation.

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The mobile patent mess may get worse

Posted Aug 11, 2011 22:51 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (12 responses)

That will help the situation. The only way out is to have the whole system collapse for good.

The only way out is to first reach a phase of absolute non-sense: more lawyers than engineers working in the business, competition consistently blocked by lawsuits, and all innovation moving to Asia, which will eventually ignore the funny laws of the declining western world (they already own us anyway). Then and only then has the problem a chance to draw some media/public/political attention. Until then nothing good will ever happen. Why would it? Until then trying to fix the patent mess is just a very naive and vain political effort and a waste of time. Who cares about a bunch of weirdos whining about an obscure and boring problem on a couple of geeky websites? Only when the release of the iPhone 8 will be blocked then normal people might start to care. Delaying the Galaxy tab is a good start (which actually drew media attention), but it is far from enough. Please more of this.

The mobile patent mess may get worse

Posted Aug 11, 2011 23:24 UTC (Thu) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link] (10 responses)

It's not just the "declining Western world."

China has jumped on the patent bandwagon pretty enthusiastically:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/china-poised...
It's difficult to decode the lawyer-ese, but it seems as though software can be patented in China.

Software is also patentable in Japan, although they have granted fewer patents than the USPTO.

I read a cynical editorial a while ago that basically argued that China could use patents to implement protectionist policies without getting in trouble with the World Trade Organization. I can't find the link right now.

The most positive thing to come out of this whole mess recently is the editorial piece on National Public Radio about Intellectual Ventures. It's really good to see the mainstream media picking up the story about patent trolls.

The mobile patent mess may get worse

Posted Aug 12, 2011 0:48 UTC (Fri) by Hausvib6 (guest, #70606) [Link] (3 responses)

It seems that most people won't care about this even if they have heard it from their geek friends or even, as you mentioned, NPR. Some people just says something along the line of "that's greedy" and continue to buy products from that evil company. They don't even bother about the grand scale political circuses.

It won't be long before the day when governments call FSF and the likes as "radical fundamentalist" or even "terrorist".

The mobile patent mess may get worse

Posted Aug 12, 2011 1:38 UTC (Fri) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (2 responses)

You missed that part of the 1990's when it and the EFF were labeled that for their concern about various encryption items.

The mobile patent mess may get worse

Posted Aug 12, 2011 23:26 UTC (Fri) by Hausvib6 (guest, #70606) [Link] (1 responses)

Ouch, painful memories.

I can see it coming, RIAA-like tactic.

"Hey you, yes, you, lone wolf FLOSS developer, your software is violating this company patent a, b, c, d, and e. Pay us or perhaps do you want me to go back to the office and starts looking for other violation in your software?"

The mobile patent mess may get worse

Posted Aug 16, 2011 9:31 UTC (Tue) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]

> "Hey you, yes, you, lone wolf FLOSS developer, your software is violating this company patent a, b, c, d, and e. Pay us or perhaps do you want me to go back to the office and starts looking for other violation in your software?"

A slight modification:
"(...) your software is violating 5 of this company's patents. (...)"
...And we can [almost] see it happening already.

Heh, China...

Posted Aug 12, 2011 5:47 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (5 responses)

It's difficult to decode the lawyer-ese, but it seems as though software can be patented in China.

Everything can be patented in China... and it does not matter one jot. Just like copyrights are selectively enforced patents will be selectively enforced when it'll suit the political landscape. Any company which will try to attack other companies with patents will have a lot of troubles with government... unless it attacks foreign company - then it's all the better for China so it's Ok.

They don't even bother about the grand scale political circuses.

Yup. People are replete, fat and stupid. But times are changing (take a look here - can you see when "Great Recession" ended? No? Then you know the truth: it was not a "Great Recession", it's "Greater Depression",it continues and only slowdown phase will go for ~10 years or so), eventually they will react... too late, likely, as usual.

Heh, China...

Posted Aug 12, 2011 9:44 UTC (Fri) by forlwn (guest, #63934) [Link] (2 responses)

Unfortunately, economics is not an exact science, like maths. That means that there will never be a true receipt for a certain disease. Expectations and subjective factors play an important rule. Latest strong players entering the game and huge amounts of money that can easily travel around the world, may lead to uncontrolled mass movements, leading to a time bomb of unpredicted consequences.

Heh, China...

Posted Aug 12, 2011 13:52 UTC (Fri) by Topaz (guest, #60130) [Link] (1 responses)

Mathematics is not and will never be an exact science. Gödel's incompleteness theorems

Heh, China...

Posted Aug 12, 2011 14:08 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> Gödel's incompleteness theorems

If exact sciences had to be complete, no science would be exact.

Please no pedantic and formal definition of what an "exact science" is. It is really not needed for mutual understanding.

Economics is exact enough :-)

Posted Aug 12, 2011 18:34 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

Actually economics is pretty close to "exact" science like thermodynamics. You can not predict exact direction of it but you can find limits. Reaganomics started the spiral when insolvent companies were artificially kept alive when it looked like enough of them can go bankrupt and crash the economy. It was done using quite simple yet effective instrument - but it does not work anymore. If you compare numbers it's easy to see that a lot of "wealth" must evaporate. There are a lot of ways to go, but "up" is not in the cards: you can decide who will go bankrupt and when, but you no longer have the ability to keep all of this imaginary wealth around.

Economics is exact enough :-)

Posted Aug 14, 2011 2:24 UTC (Sun) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

no, it isn't, but your comment is off-topic unless you can explain how the exactness or inexactness of economics relates to the mobile patent situation. At least on Slashdot there's a way to moderate thread-hijackers down.

The mobile patent mess may get worse

Posted Aug 12, 2011 8:34 UTC (Fri) by ssmith32 (subscriber, #72404) [Link]

I think this was a farscape episode.. a planet with 90% lawyers.. sorry for the OT.. sleep-deprived & coding too much :D

Would GPL help?

Posted Aug 12, 2011 6:20 UTC (Fri) by simlo (guest, #10866) [Link] (3 responses)

GPL would help a little: If you distribute GPL'ed code our can't sue other for violating patents in the same code, right?

Unfortunately, only the Linux kernel and a few other things are GPL in Android.

Would GPL help?

Posted Aug 12, 2011 23:18 UTC (Fri) by Hausvib6 (guest, #70606) [Link] (2 responses)

In this era of lawyers, don't have to win a lawsuit, just spend quite amount of money to stiffle or even kill the competitor.

Would GPL help?

Posted Aug 14, 2011 7:35 UTC (Sun) by AndreE (guest, #60148) [Link]

Or, more commonly, threathen to spend a lot of money and scare off potential competitors with the size of your bank balance

Would GPL help?

Posted Aug 16, 2011 14:49 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Firstly, that's only true in the US.

Secondly, it looks like the times they may be a changin ...

We've already had a recent copyright lawsuit where costs were awarded against the plaintiff for not doing due diligence. All we need is a few more, and suddenly you'll *need* a big bank balance to start a patent lawsuit ...

Cheers,
Wol

The mobile patent mess may get worse

Posted Aug 12, 2011 9:27 UTC (Fri) by forlwn (guest, #63934) [Link]

Make it all against all and some candle may start to light at the end of the tunnel

The mobile patent mess may get worse

Posted Aug 15, 2011 12:03 UTC (Mon) by csamuel (✭ supporter ✭, #2624) [Link]

This may come to nothing given that they've just announced that Google is about to buy (subject to approval) Motorola Mobility..

http://mediacenter.motorola.com/Press-Releases/Google-to-...

The article is correct in an interesting way... Google buys Motorola

Posted Aug 15, 2011 12:07 UTC (Mon) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]

So, this is actually Google now? That article ends with:

Or is Sanjay just hinting Larry here: You better buy us. Soon. You were ready to pay 4B+ for 6K Nortel patents, and we are worth 6.4B today. Offer nice premium and youll solve all your Android patent problems, and get a team to make all your Nexus stuff as a bonus. Spin out everything else to some Chinese upstart, and youll even make a nice profit in the end

Which is exactly what seems to have happened: