A pack of hungry wolves

The situation with patent lawsuits in the USA has reached its peak - many people who follow the situation in the IT industry and the response of lawyers from large companies to every takeover / step aside / jump in place will agree with this statement. It is not surprising that some organizations in this already international dispute act as sheep and others as wolves; this division of power was in a sense the starting point of the situation.

The reason for the next aggressive step on the part of Apple, pinching Android’s position on the market (it’s just silly to dispute this in the light of current events) was Google’s takeover of the Motorola phone division. Two lawsuits were sent to the court for the reason that Motorola no longer has any rights to the devices still issued to it due to the sale of a valuable asset (acquired by Google solely for the 17,000 registered Moto patents), and therefore extremely vulnerable. Full ownership of the purchase of Google will enter the turn of next year, but it is possible to tear off the skin of a sheep right now.

Florian Müller, who looks after patents on the other side of the ocean, wrote that on Friday Apple filled out official papers and would argue in court, arguing that Motorola Mobility had already transferred control over its patents to Google. This is a very interesting situation, as a matter of fact, Moto no longer has the right to: 1. respond with a claim for violation of any of its patents; 2. conduct an adequate legal dispute; 3. to license or sublicense own patents, with the exception of specific situations related to the company's products; 4. prescribe their own rights in (now not) their patents; 5. Guarantee the absence of claims for violation of their own claims. In other words, Motorola cannot do absolutely nothing for Apple’s own protection, and Google, as you know, takes two positions: “Do no harm” and “Defensive patent use”, which can be translated into Russian as: “Until they sue us, we will stand aside.”
')
True, Google has already realized that in the real world, not everything is so idyllic as it seemed to them during the initiation of the Open Handset Alliance concern, within which the Android OS is being developed and devices operating on this mobile axis are licensed / manufactured. In the real and cruel world you will be attacked from all possible and accessible sides, while smiling in the face. In my opinion, this is what is happening now with Google, forcing the transfer of HTC patent management, for Apple’s own defense in court. Even Samsung, despite its own size / influence and means, is no longer able to lift the ban on selling devices (Galaxy Tab) in Germany, which is a very bad precedent for the entire Android ecosystem. David Drummond felt hot about this.

Steve Jobs has repeatedly said that software is the soul of the device, but it seems that these words were really heard only recently. Oracle and Microsoft, armed with their own portfolios of patent bricks, began to beat on the heads of everyone who has even the slightest relation to competitive products - from individual developers (the practice of small lawsuits started with them) to Motorola companies in transition and in fact not having the strength and means of resistance.

But if developers are able to unite in order to fight back (as those who develop applications for iOS and now the same fashion has been pumping into Android’s sphere), then Google, trying to capture new areas of the market, fighting with heavyweights might not work hard. .

It is possible that HTC, which has sublicensed some patents from Google’s arsenal, will not be defeated in the US or European market due to sales ban - today such a preventive measure seems to be the most likely of all. But Motorola, which turned out to be a stumbling block, has long been trying to fight off Microsoft, angry about the fact that it was once the largest (statistically this is true now, but I think that the subjective feeling here is more important) mobile phone manufacturer preferred Android, rather than Windows Mobile, overgrown in Windows Phone. If the lawsuit drags on until the final transfer of all Motorola property to Google, then we will watch as the two giants clash in a legal battle.

And, oddly enough, all this can end very, very dramatically for Google, trying to make Android 1st OS around the world. If lawsuits fall in her direction (as the owner of Moto) by Apple and MS, and Oracle decides to complete the case with endless litigation around using the Java virtual machine on low-performance Android devices, Google may not cope with the growing pressure on Android. Let me remind you - Microsoft has serious complaints about the company Barnes & Noble, which produces Nook and Nook Color, again along the line of the OS.

In my opinion, it is the unattractive situation around Android that is the real reason HTC may want to acquire its own mobile axis - in this way it will avoid the double agent role that it now performs by releasing devices on both MS products and the Google team. Out of sight away from the heart.

On the other hand, in the conditions of current multiculturalism in the mobile device market, which all analysts predict fantastic growth in the next decade and ousting familiar personal computers, Google (now actively restructuring and not sparing money for acquisitions) can be very far-sighted. The main problem of Google, as well as Samsung, HTC and some other companies, is that, from a legal point of view, they do not have enough intellectual capital to feel at ease in the conservative market. Buying Motorola, along with the team that developed the same Razr (a revolutionary tube for its days) and a massive portfolio for $ 12,000,000,000, is a very smart move, but you have to be even smarter. If the main problem lies in the lack of status quo, then there are enough offers from various companies with both intellectual power and property on the market - HP WebOS is just one of many such offers.

This system is already unbalanced - and absolutely all market participants know about it. But until the situation is settled at the state level (and this is exactly what should happen for a fundamental change, because the patents were not invented by private companies - they were invented by the government, relatively speaking), those who have large capital will slowly push out young companies from the market. Even despite the fact that for an adequate person the whole story is nothing more than a farce.

This is a theatrical performance in which those who own what they did not create (do not forget that almost all such claims are based on claims to the software architecture and / or software part of any invention, which in the ultimatum is an attempt to sue A desk that, like you, came to the conclusion that 2 + 2 = 4) try to prove that others who do not own what they did not create violate their rights.

I am not a fan of Apple or Google, I’m only trying to objectively consider a situation in which I don’t like that someone shows teeth and bites, not because he hasn’t eaten for a long time, but because he cannot pathologically become full.