By: Nick Clayton
Source: http://blogs.wsj.com
Category: Patent Infringement
Google is already facing patent infringement actions from Apple, Oracle, Microsoft and eBay. That is just the litigation from companies with market capitalization running into the tens of billions of dollars.
As of last Thursday, according to Florian Mueller’s wireless intellectual property news blog Foss Patents, Google was also being sued by B.T. over alleged infringements affecting its activities in a wide variety of areas. The lawsuit was reportedly filed in the U.S. district court for Delaware.
BT seeks damages—even triple damages for willful and deliberate infringement—as well as an injunction. The complaint suggests that Google refused to pay. The second sentence of paragraph 21 states that “BT brings this action to recover the just compensation it is owed and to prevent Google from continuing to benefit from BT’s inventions without authorization”.
BT brings this action at a time when Google is trying to close its acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Whether BT already has a cross-license deal in place with MMI or simply doesn’t believe MMI has any patents with which Google can effectively strike back, it’s clear that BT decided to assert its rights at any rate.
I don’t know yet whether BT also brought litigation in Europe over local equivalents of those patents. It would certainly make sense to take advantage of the swift and rather patent holder-friendly decisions taken by certain German courts in order to get Google to pay sooner rather than later.
With so many major patent holders asserting their rights, obligations to pay royalties may force Google to change its Android licensing model and pass royalties on to device makers.
Mr. Mueller offers a detailed analysis of each of the six patents-in-suit which cover a variety of alleged infringements from services including Android Market, Google Music, Google Maps, Google Search, Google Places, Google Offers, Google+ and location-based advertising.
Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/12/19/british-telecom-sues-google-over-patents/
Source: http://blogs.wsj.com
Category: Patent Infringement
Google is already facing patent infringement actions from Apple, Oracle, Microsoft and eBay. That is just the litigation from companies with market capitalization running into the tens of billions of dollars.
As of last Thursday, according to Florian Mueller’s wireless intellectual property news blog Foss Patents, Google was also being sued by B.T. over alleged infringements affecting its activities in a wide variety of areas. The lawsuit was reportedly filed in the U.S. district court for Delaware.
BT seeks damages—even triple damages for willful and deliberate infringement—as well as an injunction. The complaint suggests that Google refused to pay. The second sentence of paragraph 21 states that “BT brings this action to recover the just compensation it is owed and to prevent Google from continuing to benefit from BT’s inventions without authorization”.
BT brings this action at a time when Google is trying to close its acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Whether BT already has a cross-license deal in place with MMI or simply doesn’t believe MMI has any patents with which Google can effectively strike back, it’s clear that BT decided to assert its rights at any rate.
I don’t know yet whether BT also brought litigation in Europe over local equivalents of those patents. It would certainly make sense to take advantage of the swift and rather patent holder-friendly decisions taken by certain German courts in order to get Google to pay sooner rather than later.
With so many major patent holders asserting their rights, obligations to pay royalties may force Google to change its Android licensing model and pass royalties on to device makers.
Mr. Mueller offers a detailed analysis of each of the six patents-in-suit which cover a variety of alleged infringements from services including Android Market, Google Music, Google Maps, Google Search, Google Places, Google Offers, Google+ and location-based advertising.
Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/12/19/british-telecom-sues-google-over-patents/
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