Except Nortel did use many of those patents. They decided to sell it to Rockstar, full of owners who are likely licensing the patents to themselves for use in their products. Yes, technically Rockster is an individual company that doesn't make/sell any products but it's not a troll just because of that. It's a troll if the owners didn't use it in their products.
By this logic, any standard bodies would be trolls as well if they decide to sue any companies that infringe without paying the fees.
Lots of the patents now used by patent trolls were originally granted to companies that meant to use them to protect things they built. What matters here is not Nortel, but Rockstar. And Rockstar frankly seems to me to be worse than ordinary patent trolls. Ordinary patent trolls are just running protection rackets. Rockstar was created not to make money but to suppress competition.
The purpose of patents is to suppress competition for one's own products. These patents don't protect any novel aspect of Apple's or Microsoft's products. By definition, if they're valid.
(Nitpick, but the purpose of patents is a lot more open ended than that -- "promote progress of useful arts etc." -- suppressing competition is just one of the means to that end.)
But what makes you say these patents don't cover aspects of Apple's and Microsoft's and the other shareholders' products? The patents involved in the Rockstar lawsuits cover networking, touch-screens and search. The shareholders make products which obviously infringed on these patents to varying extents, and that is why they paid billions for them.
Considering they've paid all that money to secure a "freedom to operate", so to speak, is it fair to them that everyone else gets to infringe with impunity?
As a little guy with a patent (team & I created a new & superior wireless audio technology - superior to BlueTooth Audio, Apple's Airplay & others) I'm with you!
We'd love to connect with some friendly people out west to help us, but not sure how to make that happen? It's not like we haven't tried - we spent a good deal of our savings to demo out in the Valley this past year.
Since we work full time jobs and are in our late 30s it seems harder then ever to find partners/those who can help. Though we will continue to work hard and further innovate with the goal/hopes in mind of finding help and or after a long road/fight be rewarded for our work.
Posted this link [1] in another comment, but apparently Nortel was in licensing negotiations for years before Rockstar was formed, and its CEO claims the current owners had no say in filing these lawsuits.
> current owners had no say in filing these lawsuits.
They didn't give an order, but they created a company whose sole purpose is to file these types of lawsuits. Did they really think that it would never happen?
It would be like the Manhattan Project scientists washing their hands of Nagasaki and Hiroshima because Truman was the one that gave the order.
> This is not correct. You're thinking of the Novell patents. Google did make a bid on the Nortel patents, but was not offered a place within Rockstar.
Jesus. Do you even read your own source before posting? The author seems just as confused as you are, since he's the one posting the Novell comments, and saying it's actually about Nortel, when it's not.
From your own source, here's what Microsoft said:
> Google says we bought -- Novell -- patents to keep them from Google. Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no.
> “A joint acquisition of the Novell patents that gave all parties a license would have eliminated any protection these patents could offer to Android against attacks from Microsoft and its bidding partners. Making sure that we would be unable to assert these patents to defend Android — and having us pay for the privilege — must have seemed like an ingenious strategy to them. We didn’t fall for it.”
Joining Microsoft to buy those patents would've made those patents useless for Google in the fight against Microsoft. Google is trying to buy up patents to defend against Microsoft. They can't do that if they can't assert those patents against Microsoft.
If I may try an analogy, say someone is coming at you with a knife, and you have nothing to defend yourself than a toy gun, and that person knows it's a toy gun. How useful is that gun threatening going to be to scare the guy with the knife away. Pretty useless no? Well that's the same thing with the Novell patents.
I did read it, that's why I posted it. It seems pretty clear to me. Google could've, y'know, joined them. Simple really. Surely a better idea than weaponising them? If you really believe that Google would have used them 'defensively', then you are either naive or delusional. Google knew what they were doing and knew what the ramifications of their actions would be.
Actually, Google was not offered to join the Rockstar consortium. They were offered to participate in a joint bid on the Novell portfolio (which they declined), but not -- as far as we know -- the Nortel portfolio.
I think the confusion arose when Google complained about multiple firms ganging up to win the Nortel auction, and Microsoft shot back that they'd have invited Google into the gang too if it hadn't snubbed them during the Novell auction. All PR posturing on both sides, of course, but prone to sow confusion.
For crying out loud. Will people stop confusing Nortel with Novell!!
That was about Novell patents - different company, and it all happened about a year earlier before Nortel thing went down. Completely different situations. Stop confusing them. I see this misinformation spread everywhere when there's a story about Rockstar.
To be honest, it's come up so often and is used so many times by those defending Rockstar, that I'm starting to think it's actually on a PR sheet somewhere.
> Google was offered a seat in Rockstar, they also placed a bid, and so on. They didn't want to.
Of course they didn't want to. Why would they want to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to buy a bunch of patents they couldn't actually use against any of their main competitors? All it would have bought them is a hole in their pockets (because who would have bought the patents from them if the entire industry had already been immunized to them?), and Apple and Microsoft would then have just bought a different set of patents to sell to trolls expecting for them to be used against Google.
Buying overly broad patents is paying the Danegeld. Once they know you pay the Danegeld you never get rid of the Dane.
I worked at Nortel. Selling the patents provided important money to the fucked over Nortel pensioners. These patents were used for real work, cost massive resources to fund, and Google could have outbid Apple.
By this logic, any standard bodies would be trolls as well if they decide to sue any companies that infringe without paying the fees.