Senior lawyers warns that litigation is natural outcome of intense competition in fast-growing field – but that Google is taking advantage of others' efforts
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.
He says that software patents are necessary, because so much focus has shifted from hardware to software: "The question of whether software should be patentable is, in a sense, the same as asking whether a significant part of the technological innovation happening nowadays should receive patent protection."
Gutierrez argues that Microsoft developed and has patented really critical features including "the ability to synchronise the content that you have in your phone with the information in the server of your company or in your computer at home". He adds that there are plenty of others: "Features that just make the phone much more efficient, things that are deeply embedded in the operating system." He argues that modern smartphones are a fully-fledged computer with a sophisticated, modern operating system.
The complaint means that Google and its Android handset partners have a growing number of companies ranged against them as patent litigation has intensified over the past 18 months.
Apple is suing a number of Android partners, notably including Samsung and HTC, while Microsoft has extracted per-handset licence payments from HTC and Samsung, as well as similar Android-related payments from companies as diverse as Wistron, General Dynamics, Acer, Viewsonic, Itronix and Onkyo. By some calculations, Microsoft is getting more revenue from patent-related payments from Android than from its own Windows Phone operating system.
Google bought the Android handset maker Motorola Mobility in August , apparently to acquire its long-standing patent pool relating to mobile phones, after failing to acquire a patent pool from the bankruptcy sale of the Canadian company Nortel, which went to a consortium including Microsoft, RIM and Apple.
Gutierrez says the suggestion that certain features (such as an indication of how far a page has loaded) may seem obvious to people who don't understand how systems have to be built: "Many times when you express those ideas at a high level, they seem obvious to anyone who really doesn't understand the particular ways in which certain effects are achieved in software. It's not just one feature, but a whole series of features in a phone or another mobile device that really make up the whole experience of the user."
Gutierrez rebutted the suggestion in an interview with James Temple of the San Francisco Chronicle that the software giant has a campaign against Android. "Every time there are these technologies that are really disruptive, there are patent cases. People who lived in that particular time would look and say, 'What a mess, we certainly must live in the worst time from an [intellectual property] perspective. The system is broken and something has to be done to fix it,'" he said. "That's the situation we're in right now. If you think of a mobile phone or a tablet computer today, they're not your father's or your grandfather's cell phone."
He adds that different pathways to achieve the same ends would be independently patentable – which would imply that if a company can show that it uses a different method from the patented one to achieve an effect, it would have an absolute defence against a patent infringement suit.
In June, Microsoft lost a key software patent case which it had taken all the way to the Supreme Court, after it was sued by the Canadian company i4i over certain features of earlier versions of Office.
Google is facing a lawsuit from the database giant Oracle, which in 2009 bought Sun Microsystems and the rights to its Java code, over allegations that Android doesn't comply with the licence for Java.
Google's chief lawyer complained in July that software patents are "gumming up innovation"
The interview with Gutierrez is in two parts, here and here.
source
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.
He says that software patents are necessary, because so much focus has shifted from hardware to software: "The question of whether software should be patentable is, in a sense, the same as asking whether a significant part of the technological innovation happening nowadays should receive patent protection."
Gutierrez argues that Microsoft developed and has patented really critical features including "the ability to synchronise the content that you have in your phone with the information in the server of your company or in your computer at home". He adds that there are plenty of others: "Features that just make the phone much more efficient, things that are deeply embedded in the operating system." He argues that modern smartphones are a fully-fledged computer with a sophisticated, modern operating system.
The complaint means that Google and its Android handset partners have a growing number of companies ranged against them as patent litigation has intensified over the past 18 months.
Apple is suing a number of Android partners, notably including Samsung and HTC, while Microsoft has extracted per-handset licence payments from HTC and Samsung, as well as similar Android-related payments from companies as diverse as Wistron, General Dynamics, Acer, Viewsonic, Itronix and Onkyo. By some calculations, Microsoft is getting more revenue from patent-related payments from Android than from its own Windows Phone operating system.
Google bought the Android handset maker Motorola Mobility in August , apparently to acquire its long-standing patent pool relating to mobile phones, after failing to acquire a patent pool from the bankruptcy sale of the Canadian company Nortel, which went to a consortium including Microsoft, RIM and Apple.
Gutierrez says the suggestion that certain features (such as an indication of how far a page has loaded) may seem obvious to people who don't understand how systems have to be built: "Many times when you express those ideas at a high level, they seem obvious to anyone who really doesn't understand the particular ways in which certain effects are achieved in software. It's not just one feature, but a whole series of features in a phone or another mobile device that really make up the whole experience of the user."
Gutierrez rebutted the suggestion in an interview with James Temple of the San Francisco Chronicle that the software giant has a campaign against Android. "Every time there are these technologies that are really disruptive, there are patent cases. People who lived in that particular time would look and say, 'What a mess, we certainly must live in the worst time from an [intellectual property] perspective. The system is broken and something has to be done to fix it,'" he said. "That's the situation we're in right now. If you think of a mobile phone or a tablet computer today, they're not your father's or your grandfather's cell phone."
He adds that different pathways to achieve the same ends would be independently patentable – which would imply that if a company can show that it uses a different method from the patented one to achieve an effect, it would have an absolute defence against a patent infringement suit.
In June, Microsoft lost a key software patent case which it had taken all the way to the Supreme Court, after it was sued by the Canadian company i4i over certain features of earlier versions of Office.
Google is facing a lawsuit from the database giant Oracle, which in 2009 bought Sun Microsystems and the rights to its Java code, over allegations that Android doesn't comply with the licence for Java.
Google's chief lawyer complained in July that software patents are "gumming up innovation"
The interview with Gutierrez is in two parts, here and here.
source
