Oxymoron of the day: Reality TV
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Apple, Google and Samsung fight for 8,800 mobile patents
MOBILE TECHNOLOGY OUTFITS Apple, Google and Samsung are in a bidding war for a massive collection of mobile phone patents owned by Interdigital.
The patents relate to mobile technology for the transfer of information, an important area in the smartphone arena that could see the successful bidder enhance its legal position in internet and telephone communications technology.
The portfolio of 8,800 patents could earn Interdigital over $5bn, according to analysts, as the major technology players have proven their interest in patent collections recently, such as in the squabble for Nortel's extensive patent library and Google's subsequent acquisition of 1,000 IBM patents.
In addition to Apple, Google and Samsung, there are other potential bidders who have not yet been identified, according to the anonymous sources close to Bloomberg. This could create an even bigger competition and a larger payment to Interdigital.
It's likely that Samsung has expressed interest largely because Apple has, as the two companies are at each other's throats in a heated patents dispute, which recently saw Samsung delay the launch of its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia.
"Interdigital has a lot of key patents," Lee Seung Woo, an analyst at Shinyoung Securities told Bloomberg. "The fight between Apple and Samsung is getting serious, so if the assets go to Apple, it could be pretty risky for Samsung. To hedge the risk, Samsung could go ahead with bidding, although they may have to pay a big premium."
Google is also in a patents row with Oracle over its Android mobile operating system, but that litigation relates more to Java software than smartphone technology patents. However, its failed bid for Nortel's patents might mean it's a lot more keen on being successful this time around. It will be particularly intent on ensuring that Apple, a primary rival, does not win the bid, and could even team up with its ally Samsung to make a joint bid.
Interdigital's CEO, William Merritt, said that its porfolio is "deeper and stronger" than that of Nortel, which means we'll likely see a pitched battle between major mobile technology players over the coming weeks and months. µ
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I agree: torch the whole patent system.
As a sheerly practical point: whoever "wins" this auction deserves to get burned by wasting the money. You can buy a lot of lawyers and licensing for $5B. I don't exactly mind this form of re-distributing the wealth, as it's clear that potential buyers have WAY too much cash on hand. Maybe someone else can put it to better use.
Collect them all together & burn them, the whole patents system is a disaster. Rather than protect intellectual property most patents are now used to generate windfall profits at the expense of others who actually develop & manufacture technology.
Now that apple is strongly playing the sue all competitors out of business card... I think it will be bad no matter who buys them. Google might be less bad from a consumer point of view, but google's real product is advertising not phones like apple and samsung. With google, you are the product, and the advertisers are the customer. Apple is greedy and power hungry, and samsung is a jealous copycat.
Take your pick.
Google, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, SOny, other android licensess et all should band together and get these patents.
Apple should be stopped from using these patents to browbeat competitiors via litigation.
Apple would be forced to cross license
unless it wants to be sued in turn since these patents would undoubtably cover other practices of Apple.
Id rather trust Google and its partners than Apple.
Apple would stifle all innovation they are worse than Microsoft.
So i hope Google has the wisdom and gather all its android partners together, muster their resources and acquire these patents before Apple does.