Patent Wars: Digging the Pits for Yourself?

Introduction

In early August, one of the three IT whales, Google Inc., accused two other IT whales: Microsoft and Apple in collusion to undermine the position of its famous Android operating system, which now actually occupies more than half of the mobile operating system market devices. To this end, Microsoft and Apple bought patents from Nortel, a bankrupt company. What will happen next is not difficult to understand: multi-million dollar or even multi-billion dollar lawsuits against Google, incriminating it in copyright infringement. This is the latest information about patent wars, which flare up like a fire, and already not even in the forest, but at a gas storage facility. Still would! After all, united, Microsoft and Apple bought Nortel patents for a record 4.5 billion dollars at a starting price of 1 billion dollars. In this case, about 6 thousand different patents were purchased.

Development

And on the way a package of 8,800 patents, which InterDigital puts up for sale. How much this package will go under the hammer? If we apply linear interpolation, then the figure will be somewhere around 6.6 billion dollars. But, most likely, here the linear laws are not applicable. There are laws of business quantum mechanics. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the deal closes with $ 8 billion, or even all of ten. Naturally, both Microsoft and Apple hope to beat off this huge amount of money. How? We have already written above - multibillion-dollar claims against Google, and even substantial contributions in favor of patent holders from each device sold, in which a free (!) Android OS is installed. And as a crystal dream - to make Android distribution unprofitable.

However, much has already been written in more detail about this last battle of the three giants. For example, Patent drama with the stars . By the way, I also want to recall the notorious company Oracle, whose lawsuit against Google hung over the last sword of Damocles. After all, it is neither much nor less, but the possibility of using Java in the Android OS!
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You can also recall the not so impressive (at stake is not such a multi-billion dollar amount), and therefore less well-known patent war between Apple and Samsung. The aggressive Yabloko accused the Korean giant of having borrowed the Apple iPhone design for its popular smartphones Galaxy. And this is despite the fact that Steve Jobs’s company buys half of the components for its iPad and iPhone from Samsung!

Of course, there are some similarities between the Galaxy and the iPhone. However, such claims "Yablochniki" could present to any manufacturer tachfonov. They all have a similar appearance. Compare, for example, HTC, Motorola, LG, etc. touch phones. However, Apple has already filed a lawsuit against HTC, and most recently filed a lawsuit against Motorola, now, however, because of the design of the Xoom tablet. Read more here .

Google’s counterstrike will of course be Motorola’s purchase of it. It remains only to wait and see what it will lead to.

Many articles have already been written that such patent wars have become an effective weapon in the competition. It was also written that patent law is long overdue to change. In particular, to reduce the term of patent protection from 20 years to at least 5. After all, for 20 years, and even in the field of IT-technologies, the invention becomes useless to no one. For example, when in 2003 the patent for the LZW data compression method (Lempel – Ziv – Welch) expired, it remained in demand only for the GIF format.

Climax

What can these patent wars lead to? The most obvious is a slowdown in scientific and technological progress. Instead of using their intellectual and material capabilities to develop new devices and programs, corporations spend resources on a costly patent war between themselves. However, this conclusion is obvious.

But you can do one more. You know, when I studied information on patent wars, in particular, about the collision of three whales: Microsoft, Apple and Google, when the first two began to be friends against the third, this situation reminded me of the international situation of the beginning of the 20th century. Remember the Entente? When were England, France and Russia friends against Germany? How did it end? Lost all these players. World War I, World War II, and only one major player remained in the arena - the United States of America.

And today such a major player can already be seen with the naked eye - this is China, which, to put it mildly, ignores any intellectual property rights altogether. Which frankly just copies the same Apple iPhone, which, as if in mockery, can stick the Android operating system into a copy of the iPhone 4G. Which, in the end, created a clone of Apple iPhone 5 and announced it earlier than the original device from the United States.

Conclusion. By and large, the leadership of the United States in the field of IT-technologies is ensured by developing all the new innovations. In other areas, the Americans have already lost leadership, including in their primordial birthplace - the automotive industry. The Chinese began to sell cars more. But these patent wars, in which victory will definitely be Pyrrhic, will nullify the leadership in the IT field. An area that alone can provide leadership on a global scale.

PS Chinese parable. The monkey watched on a tree, as two tigers fight for prey. When the tigers were weakened, she climbed down from the tree, finished off the tigers and took possession of the prey.