It takes flowcharts to keep track of all the mobile patent lawsuits under way.Apple sued HTC, while Kodak sued Apple, Samsung and Sony. RIM filed suit against Kodak and Motorola. And what are called nonpracticing entities (or patent trolls, if you prefer) such as Intellectual Ventures and NTP have sued pretty much the lot of them.
It can seem – and some have argued – that the patent system itself is broken, forcing companies to spend more time and money on legal battles than research and development.To read this San Francisco Chronicle report in full, see:
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/29/BUL01LNAPK.DTLAlso see:Microsoft says Google Android is ‘standing on our shoulders’
One of Microsoft’s most senior lawyers has accused Google’s Android software of “standing on the shoulders” of companies such as his own in the smartphone wars, and that the flurry of patent lawsuits going on between companies involved in the field is only natural in a rapidly developing field.In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Horacio Gutierrez, the deputy general counsel for Microsoft, says that patent protections are necessary to give companies the incentive to spend millions of dollars and years of effort on new products.
www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/31/microsoft-android-patent-battle