Patent Wars Erupt Again in Tech Sector
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The long-running patent war among the technology industry’s heavyweights just grew a whole lot bigger—and more controversial.
After a brief hiatus for major new litigation, a joint venture owned by Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., BlackBerry Ltd., Ericsson Inc., and Sony Corp. launched a barrage of new lawsuits against a group of defendants that include Google Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., LG Electronics Inc., HTC Corp. and Huawei Technologies Co.
The suits, brought by the so-called Rockstar Consortium, largely position companies that don’t sell smartphones built around Google’s Android operating system against those that do. The suits accuse most of the defendants of violating patents involving smartphone designs and features. The litigation also targets parts of Google’s core Web-search technology, based on patents Rockstar bought from Nortel Networks Inc. in 2011 after defeating Google in a bidding war.
That purchase of the 6,000 Nortel patents caused anxiety at the Justice Department. A chief concern was that Apple and Microsoft, which took ownership of many patents related to wireless standards, rather than leave them with Rockstar, would use the patents to quash competition.
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