ajdroidx
Android Expert
A little old, but I just seen it:
Google formed with an internal motto of "Don't Be Evil" in response to the perceived business practices of Microsoft, and then proceeded over the years to manipulate customer data (see what Google does when you search) and force software on users (see how you are already signed up for Google+) much like Redmond. Now the Mountain View company is taking hypocrisy to a new level with their latest lawsuit against the Apple- and Microsoft-led Rockstar Consortium. Ah, the irony!
Google vs. Rockstar
Last week Google filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California against Rockstar and its subsidiary, MobileStar Technologies. The case was brought in response to a series of lawsuits Rockstar filed in October 2013 in the Eastern District of Texas against Google and seven of its Android hardware partners: Samsung, Huawei, ZTE, LG, HTC, Pantech, and ASUSTeK.
The Rockstar lawsuit against Google focused on search engine use, and also included actions against the Android manufacturer for a variety of hardware and software issues. Google's response, however, is an attempt to block and disrupt that lawsuit, based on lots of fancy talk about what a rotten patent troll Rockstar is.
Many bloggers around the internet have taken the bait and attempted to turn this story into a "Google against Apple's Patent Troll" hero's journey, but the facts suggest something ironically different.
Patent Troll
Patent troll? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Rockstar was formed by Apple, BlackBerry, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, and Sony to purchase the patents of dying tech star Nortel in July of 2011 for $4.5 billion. Google is attempting to spin this event as an example of patent trolling, while ignoring the fact that it was the company that overinflated the price for these patents in the first place.
Google went hard after the Nortel patents, opening with a $900 million bid that sounded alarm bells across the industry. It was clear what Google wanted to do with these patents: use them to force Apple to stop suing Android manufactures. Google bid as high as $4.4 billion for the patents. No other single company wanted to pay as much as Google to gain these patents, but by joining together and forming Rockstar, they were able to cobble together a winning bid of $4.5 billion.
But Google was not finished there; the Mountain View company went on to buy the remains of Motorola for $12.5 billion and has tried unsuccessfully to use those patents to sue Apple and other members of Rockstar. To date, the Motorola purchase has been a total bust for Google in the courtroom.
And that isn't even the extent of Google's use/misuse of the patent system to protect itself. As Florian Mueller points outs in an op/ed piece for The Hill from this past November, Google "bought roughly 2,000 patents from IBM, and smaller quantities from failed startups and entities it now denounces as 'trolls', such as Mosaid, against which it later brought an antitrust complaint in the European Union. Another 'troll', Intellectual Ventures, had received one of its first investments ever from Google."
Google has been aggressive in seeking out patents to use as leverage against other companies since the release of Android, which Mueller correctly states was released "in 2007, using