4 ms·

The Android gang is not offensive (yet) because IIRC their most important patents are "essential" patents (connecting to 3G network and stuff like that), which

The Android gang is not offensive (yet) because IIRC their most important patents are "essential" patents (connecting to 3G network and stuff like that), which they can't go offensive about. Google paid $12B for Motorola Mobility and was willing to pay another $3.141B for Nortel patents. They're a publicly traded company, they can't just dump $15B for "charity" and "advancing the technology". I'm not sure that had they won the Nortel patents they would be as un-evil as they are now. Apple is being obnoxious, no denying that. But Google is just being 'good' because being 'bad' is not profitable to them at the moment. They're all companies, and capitalism rules. As others have said, hate the game not the players. Patents are good, but patenting ridiculous "innovations" or attempting to license the patented technology for unreasonable prices is the real issue here.

fpgeek 14y ago
There's actually one other big thing that stops the Android side from going on the offensive. The Android open-source code (like the WebM and other Google open source releases, IIRC) comes with a patent license (as it has to, or no other companies would touch it). From what I recall, that license permits you to use any patents the publisher (generally Google) owns that are required by that code as long as you don't sue anyone over patent infringement with respect to that same code. That makes going on the offensive with Android-related patents nearly impossible - anyone Google tried to sue could just integrate Android code related to the asserted patents to get a patent license, unless they already had Android-related patent infringement lawsuits going (which gets back to using patents defensively).