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Trick or Treat @ Android
Posted By JaeWon Lee, Nov 6, 2013
A tiger dies and leaves a skin. A man dies and leaves a name. How about this? Q: A bankrupt tech-company? A: A bunch of patents. In 2011, Nortel, now a debtor in chapter 11 proceedings, sold a portfolio of more than 6,000 patents at an auction. Google started its bid at $900 million and subsequently increased its bid multiple times. Google ultimately bid at $4.4 billion, but lost to Rockstar’s $4.5 billion. Yes, it is Rockstar who won that action. You may not hear of Rockstar. Rockstar introduces itself as a patent licensing business that owns and manages a portfolio of 4,000+ patents developed by Nortel. Simply put, Rockstar is a consortium of industry leaders (and equally Google’s competitors) – Apple, BlackBerry, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, and Sony. So, while Rockstar is technically, legally, and maybe correctly, an independent company, it is not hard to find a tie to non-Androids. Everyone in the smartphone industry knew exactly where it would go. They bid vigorously at the auction and finally Rockstar spent multi-billion dollars to load its gun. Licensing failed. The next big thing? It fired at Google and its friends last week, on Halloween. Rockstar basically filed two categories of lawsuits: One against Google and the seven other against Google’s hardware partners – ASUSTek, HTC, Huawei, LG, Pantech, Samsung, and ZTE. Rockstar alleged that Google infringed seven of its U.S. patents. All seven patents are from the same family of “Associate search engine.” The infringement allegations go to the core of Google’s search engine business: “Google has infringed and continue to infringe the patent by its manufacture, use, sale, importation, and/or offer for sale of systems, methods, products, and processes for matching search terms with relevant advertising and/or information based on those search terms and other user data.” Against the device maker defendants, Rockstar alleged consistently that they infringed seven of its U.S. patents. The patents-in-suit are: “Electronic package carrying an electronic component and assembly of mother board and electronic package,” “Navigation tool for graphical user interface,” “Internet protocol filter,” “Integrated message center,” “System and method for notifying a user of an incoming communication event,” “Managing a virtual private network,” and “Call trace on a packet switched network.” Sources: http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/11/failed-44-billion-bid-for-nortel.html