Google will not receive Nortel patents. Not even pi
On the vicissitudes accompanying the bankruptcy of the telecommunications company Nortel, Shapelez wrote in his record of patent weapons, which was at the disposal of Nortel and had to go under the hammer. Google announced that it was going to buy a huge package of patents (about 6000 patents affecting telecommunications technologies) to innovate and protect companies from patent trolls. At the same time, the US Department of Justice placed an eye on Apple, which also wanted to get hold of patents, because lawyers suspected that Apple had a desire not to innovate, but to patent trolling. But in the end, the suspicions turned out to be only suspicions, and Google was left with nothing at the end of the auction.
Despite a decent starting bid of $ 900 million, Google lost the bid to a joint alliance, which included Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Sony. The auction was pretty funny. The starting bid, apparently, was not eager to kill any company alone, but by combining the above companies began to tease Google, interrupting the search giant's bid. Competitors exchanged shots, and here, according to sources from Reuters, the alliance staked $ 3 billion. And Google was original, placing a rate of $ 3.14159 billion. Google apparently wanted very much to get these patents, but to butt alone without allies with the corporations, which in terms of its weight, it surpasses it, it could not (for the sake of fairness, it is worth noting that Google has been supporting Intel for a long time, but when the stakes became too high, Intel’s departed from bidding). As a result, the top managers of Google considered it unreasonable to interrupt the bet of $ 4.5 billion, although it would probably be enough, judging by the company's financial indicators. It is not yet known how the patents will be distributed among the winners, but it is known that Ericsson has invested $ 340 million in this company, and RIM $ 770 million. Apparently, Apple will get most of the patents. And representatives of Google declined to comment on all this in detail, limiting themselves to the fact that they called the auction disappointing.
What does all this threaten? Google was going to attach all these patents to the development of Android and Chromium projects. Now, Google will have to stay away from the patent package as if from a plague barn or pay royalties for using patents. This is quite normal practice, such as the recent agreement that Apple should pay Nokia a round sum for patent infringement, but also pay fees for every iPhone sold ([irony] asks for a slogan - buy an iPhone, support Elopa [/ irony]) . But this will hit the buyer in the end, as the cost of production of devices on Google Android will grow. That is, if among the 6,000 telecommunications patents there are patents affecting Android (and they are there), then Microsoft will have leverage to put pressure on manufacturers, since HTC, which pays royalties for each android phone sold, will do it well. Blow in the gut get, in addition to Android OS, and Chromium OS, and MeeGo, for Intel, too, remained in the dark. It turns out that, if necessary, free breathing of chromobucks (which breathe freely because of the fact that Central Asia looks at them with caution), as well as tablets and netbooks under MeeGo, can be blocked. Development will receive, on the contrary, BlackberryOS, iOS and Windows Phone. The fate of WebOS is questionable, since HP is not painfully cheerfully selling its devices, but if they start to speak, they may also get sued.
From all this history, there is a great doubt about whether to spend energy on free projects in the field of user telecommunications (smartphones, tablets, etc.), if companies that cover SPOs that they share with the community in the form of open projects like Chromium, are defeated, and their partners in the future have a chance to get claims from patent holders (and the history of Microsoft vs HTC, as well as Apple vs. Samsung guarantee this with a high probability)? For me personally, as an open source user, this seems to be worth the trouble.
Is there any chance that patents will not be used for trolling? Yes, there are considerable ones. Although Microsoft looks like a corporation of evil, it’s engaged in patent claims no more than others, so you shouldn’t expect them to sue Google from scratch, considering that Google doesn’t get anything from Android itself, but only from the percentage of application sales and from mobile advertising search, as well as the terms of contracts for the use of Google services in the manufacturers' devices (formally, the manufacturer has the right to cut out everything related to Google from Android, but it’s unprofitable for manufacturers to cut down such infrastructure). So Google itself will not suffer, but its partners can get nuts, which will simply become unprofitable to do something on the same Android platform. Then it will start losing the share of mobile search and Google, but this is in the long run. In the short term, Google needs to pray that the courts engaged in demonopolization will not approve the deal. And to approve the transaction must in Canada and the United States two different national courts.
According to Reuters ( 1 ), PCMag , Toronto Star
Despite a decent starting bid of $ 900 million, Google lost the bid to a joint alliance, which included Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Sony. The auction was pretty funny. The starting bid, apparently, was not eager to kill any company alone, but by combining the above companies began to tease Google, interrupting the search giant's bid. Competitors exchanged shots, and here, according to sources from Reuters, the alliance staked $ 3 billion. And Google was original, placing a rate of $ 3.14159 billion. Google apparently wanted very much to get these patents, but to butt alone without allies with the corporations, which in terms of its weight, it surpasses it, it could not (for the sake of fairness, it is worth noting that Google has been supporting Intel for a long time, but when the stakes became too high, Intel’s departed from bidding). As a result, the top managers of Google considered it unreasonable to interrupt the bet of $ 4.5 billion, although it would probably be enough, judging by the company's financial indicators. It is not yet known how the patents will be distributed among the winners, but it is known that Ericsson has invested $ 340 million in this company, and RIM $ 770 million. Apparently, Apple will get most of the patents. And representatives of Google declined to comment on all this in detail, limiting themselves to the fact that they called the auction disappointing.
What does all this threaten? Google was going to attach all these patents to the development of Android and Chromium projects. Now, Google will have to stay away from the patent package as if from a plague barn or pay royalties for using patents. This is quite normal practice, such as the recent agreement that Apple should pay Nokia a round sum for patent infringement, but also pay fees for every iPhone sold ([irony] asks for a slogan - buy an iPhone, support Elopa [/ irony]) . But this will hit the buyer in the end, as the cost of production of devices on Google Android will grow. That is, if among the 6,000 telecommunications patents there are patents affecting Android (and they are there), then Microsoft will have leverage to put pressure on manufacturers, since HTC, which pays royalties for each android phone sold, will do it well. Blow in the gut get, in addition to Android OS, and Chromium OS, and MeeGo, for Intel, too, remained in the dark. It turns out that, if necessary, free breathing of chromobucks (which breathe freely because of the fact that Central Asia looks at them with caution), as well as tablets and netbooks under MeeGo, can be blocked. Development will receive, on the contrary, BlackberryOS, iOS and Windows Phone. The fate of WebOS is questionable, since HP is not painfully cheerfully selling its devices, but if they start to speak, they may also get sued.
From all this history, there is a great doubt about whether to spend energy on free projects in the field of user telecommunications (smartphones, tablets, etc.), if companies that cover SPOs that they share with the community in the form of open projects like Chromium, are defeated, and their partners in the future have a chance to get claims from patent holders (and the history of Microsoft vs HTC, as well as Apple vs. Samsung guarantee this with a high probability)? For me personally, as an open source user, this seems to be worth the trouble.
Is there any chance that patents will not be used for trolling? Yes, there are considerable ones. Although Microsoft looks like a corporation of evil, it’s engaged in patent claims no more than others, so you shouldn’t expect them to sue Google from scratch, considering that Google doesn’t get anything from Android itself, but only from the percentage of application sales and from mobile advertising search, as well as the terms of contracts for the use of Google services in the manufacturers' devices (formally, the manufacturer has the right to cut out everything related to Google from Android, but it’s unprofitable for manufacturers to cut down such infrastructure). So Google itself will not suffer, but its partners can get nuts, which will simply become unprofitable to do something on the same Android platform. Then it will start losing the share of mobile search and Google, but this is in the long run. In the short term, Google needs to pray that the courts engaged in demonopolization will not approve the deal. And to approve the transaction must in Canada and the United States two different national courts.
According to Reuters ( 1 ), PCMag , Toronto Star
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/123243/
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