[throwawaykf05]

TFA (perhaps unsurprisingly) does not mention this particular Microsoft-Google case:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/appeals-court-uph...

Of all the patent lawsuits that happened in all the smartphone wars that nobody won, this was the only case where a company was actually sanctioned for, essentially, abusing patents. And this happened on Google's watch. For all the rhetoric Google spewed about how their competitors were abusing patents, ironic that they were the one company that was actually found to be a bad actor. I always thought Google for too much of a free pass on that one.

Interestingly the Ars article I linked does not mention Google at all. Guess it's not so surprising they got a free pass.

[nemothekid]

Did you link the right article - the referenced article references a court case between Motorola and Microsoft - one that started before Google's acquisition of Moto.

It seems the patent battle was Microsoft abuse of its own patents to take a percentage of all Android sales (and Moto's revenue).

Edit: Motorola vs Microsoft, not Google

[throwawaykf05]

People may like to portray Microsoft's use of patents as "abuse", but the fact stands that they have successfully licensed their portfolio to most Android manufacturers with a minimum of lawsuits and, more importantly, without being legally penalized like Google/Motorola were.

[chc]

> the referenced article references a court case between Motorola and Google

I think you mean Motorola and Microsoft.

[throwawaykf05]

It started a couple months before the acquisition but largely went through and ended (I.e. with the 14M verify against) while Google owned Motorola.

[nemothekid]

Well I'm not sure how the article backs up your statement. It was Microsoft who started the patent litigation against Motorola, and it was Motorola who decided to not pay Microsoft. Google was only tangentially involved due to its acquisition which happened after the litigation started, so I'm unsure how Google is getting a free pass - Google really didn't do anything (as far as the scope of the article goes).

[throwawaykf05]

When you fully own the entity that is involved, you are not "tangentially" involved.

[Oletros]

The filling by Microsoft in november 2010 is not a couple of months before Google's acquisition

[throwawaykf05]

Mea culpa, my memory is bad, so let's lay out the timeline:

Early Oct 2010: Microsoft files lawsuit.

Late Oct 2010: Motorola countersues.

Aug 2011: Google announces Motorola acquisition. (Many would say Google's watch starts now.)

May 2012: Google closes Motorola acquisition.

Sept 2013: Microsoft wins 14M judgement with jury deciding unanimously that Google was a bad actor.

Regardless of where you start the stopwatch, Google had at least a full 16 months to prevent this outcome. And note again, Google was the only company involved in the smartphone wars to suffer this fate. Given its previous rhetoric about "patent abuse", this is nothing but hypocrisy.

[nemothekid]

>And note again, Google was the only company involved in the smartphone wars to suffer this fate. Given its previous rhetoric about "patent abuse", this is nothing but hypocrisy.

Prevent what outcome. You aren't being clear on how Google abused patents. What patents did specifically Google abuse? If my reading comprehension serves me right, Google didn't sue anyone over the use of any patents - Motorola and Microsoft did. The litigation you listed says Motorola refused to pay a licensing fee, and Microsoft sued - all without the help of Google.

If your argument is that after the the acquisition, Google should have went behind the backs of Moto's lawyers who had been working 8 months on this case and done something - then I assume you are just grasping at straws to create some "hypocrisy" story.

[throwawaykf05]

> Prevent what outcome.

From the link I pasted: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/appeals-court-uph...

"The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has upheld (PDF) a 2013 jury verdict finding that Motorola must pay Microsoft $14.5 million for violating its commitments to license certain standard-essential patents on a "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" (FRAND) basis."

>Motorola and Microsoft did.

As the timeline I posted shows, Google owned Motorola for a significant portion of the duration of the lawsuit, most importantly the part where they got penalized.

> If your argument is that after the the acquisition, Google should have went behind the backs of Moto's lawyers who had been working 8 months on this case and done something...

Uh, yes? If you're putting out a bunch of PR about how other companies are using patents to "attack" Android, you should not end up the only company penalized for actually abusing patents. You can't say, "Oh, it's a company we fully own, but we can't really control their lawyers and waste their efforts." You know who else plays the "shell company" game, right?

[Oletros]

yap, Google is evil, got it

[throwawaykf05]

Not quite evil, just a hypocrite.

[lern_too_spel]

TFA mentions that exact case.

"In return fire, Motorola Mobilty demanded Xbox patent royalties. In particular Motorola Mobility demanded higher payments for its s H.264 video and networking 'essential' patents."

[throwawaykf05]

My bad, was not very clear, I meant TFA does not mention the 14M judgement that Google was slapped with, marking it as the only company legally proven to be abusing patents.

[lern_too_spel]

Litigation is a crap-shoot. Microsoft could have just as easily been slapped with such a judgement on its FAT patent that provoked that countersuit. Instead, it went the other way.

The only thing that's clear is that Microsoft was the aggressor. Without the FAT litigation, there would have been no h.264 litigation.

[throwawaykf05]

Sure, litigation a crapshoot, but MS has asserted the FAT (and other) patents numerous times but has not seen anything like this judgement. In fact, even the most egregious patent trolls have not suffered anything like this. The thing that is really clear but missed by most is that this was the one lawsuit where pretty much every nuetral party involved agreed that Google / Motorola was the bad actor, and a penalty was imposed on the badness of the actions, totally unrelated to the quantity of infringement itself.