BT Sues Google Over Android 214
phonewebcam writes "British Telecom is claiming billions of dollars of damages from Google in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. which says that the Android mobile operating system infringes a number of the telecoms company's key patents. The lawsuit, filed in the state of Delaware in the U.S., relates to six patents which BT says are infringed by the Google Maps, Google Music, location-based advertising and Android Market products on Android. If successful, the suit could mean that Google or mobile handset makers will have to pay BT royalties on each Android handset in use and which they produce."
I'll be watching this one (Score:5, Interesting)
There's one big reason I'll pay attention to this one:
Patent trolls file in Texas; serious patent holders file in Delaware.
What the fuck? (Score:5, Interesting)
The patent cited in the article as an example of BT's amazingly valuable innovations:
Deciding whether to stream music based on whether the phone is using a wifi or cellular connection.
Why the fuck is that patentable? Seriously, I just looked up "obvious" in the dictionary and it gave that idea as an example. That's not an invention or a technology. What the fuck, America?
Re:I'll be watching this one (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think they are patent trolls, somehow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_Group
Depends on your point of view. This is the company that sued (and lost) claiming a patent on the hyperlink.
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/networking/2000/12/18/bt-sues-over-hyperlink-claim-2083266/ [zdnet.co.uk]
Everybody wants a piece of Android's action (Score:5, Interesting)
This seems like the new business model:
I do not like these developments. Soon the royalty fees on an Android will cost more than the device itself.
John Carmack on Software patents (Score:4, Interesting)
>The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it
>with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally
>used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years
>ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.
>
> On software patents, Quoted in "John Carmack: Knee Deep in the Voodoo" Voodo Extreme(2000-09-20)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack [wikiquote.org]
Re:There has to be more to this (Score:4, Interesting)
Try e-mailing BT's chief exec, Ian Livingston directly and ask him:
ian.livingston@bt.com
Perhaps he'll just fob you off to the PR or legal department, but he's responded to me before when I've had issues with his company and has actually been really good in helping me out. I e-mailed him on a Saturday morning when I wanted a second phone line reenabling and their sales Team told me there'd be no engineer cost, and then they sent me a £120 engineer bill and their support folks insisted I'd have to pay it. Within an hour, despite it being a Saturday he'd replied personally via his Blackberry and CC'd his PA telling her to get someone to sort it for me and they did. He also got things moving when their engineers were dicking around unable to fix a line at my old house for months.
I can't promise anything, but of all the CEOs I've attempted to contact he's been the most helpful and willing to respond personally which is more than can be said for the likes of Amazon's UK boss such that I had to get the office of fair trading to rule against them on a complaint to sort out the problems I had with them (Guaranteed next day deliveries turning up 2 weeks later, twice, and not willing to refund delivery). Might be worth a go to express your concerns, but be polite, be reasonable in expressing your concerns and write your e-mail well.
Re:Yet Another Reason... (Score:4, Interesting)
Personal take:
My job is to get things done. When I have a task to accomplish, I want to accomplish it by the most efficient and quick way possible. Patents get in the way by doing it so there are solutions I can't use and must work around for no good technical reason.
That could be a tradeoff if there was something in them for me, but there isn't. Patents are mostly useless for single developers and small companies, so from my point of view they're always a weapon that can be used against me, but that I can never wield.
Since there's no reason for me to support them, I don't.
Wider take:
Looking at the industry, software patents horribly fail at the promotion of "the Progress of Science and useful Arts" they're supposed to be doing. They're instead used as WMDs and to force negotiation. Look for instance at the current mess in the phone area: Both Apple and Samsung are warring with each other, but both already have existing products. Meaning, the "progress of science and useful arts" has already happened, and all those patents are getting used for is for trying to remove the other's product from the market, which would result in diminishing the "progress of science and useful arts", going against the stated intention.
Patents are a means to an end, that being said progress, not an end in themselves. If progress is already happening, then patents aren't needed, and if patents result in the rolling back of said progress, then they're actually being damaging.
This in my view mostly unimportant. The way I see it, software patents are horribly failing from the general point of view. The important thing is the cumulative effect they're having, and it's heavily detrimental. If things are obviously wrong at the high level point of view, then people not getting the low level details right doesn't suddenly make the overall situation good. It just means that people see there is a problem but are failing at finding the right cause for it.
Re:Because it was british (Score:4, Interesting)
The ipad injunction involved a European "Community Design" [osnews.com], an appallingly stupid concept which is actually considerably worse than patents. There's no obviousness or prior art test AT ALL, they're simply granted automatically upon payment of the filing fee. It's absolutely guaranteed to be abused like this, in fact as the link shows Apple have a program that spam-registers designs which they have no intention of even using, just to make life difficult for their competitors. It's hard to escape the conclusion that it's simply a cynical device to collect those filing fees, with the negative effects on business and consumers being somebody else's problem.
Oh, and the extremely generic [osnews.com] community design they used for the ipad thing was filed in 2004, 6 years before the first ipad announcement.
Re:Yet Another Reason... (Score:3, Interesting)
I am currently in the process of filing a software patent because management directed me to. If you asked me, I (and everyone else who worked on the software) would tell you that our software is stupid. Anyone else who sets out to solve the same problem we did would probably end up solving it the same way. It is not innovative. We were told that the success of our project is measured by the amount of IP filed and so we made some crap up to look like IP so management would be happy and we would look successful. The reality is we have crap. Management, however, decided that our idea was great and sent it off to some patent lawyer who is currently trying to make it look innovative and unique. The best part is, another company already has a patent for a product that already does what we did, but they did it the correct way, not the cheap dirty way that doesn't really work.
That is why the software patent system is broken. We, the engineers, know the patent is crap. We, the engineers, get paid nice bonuses for filing IP and our projects' success are measured by how much IP we file each year. Ergo, we want to be successful, well paid engineers, so we file crap IP and management somehow buys into it. A patent lawyer then gets paid a boatload of money to make the crap idea look good, and I seriously doubt cares if the idea is crap or not. In then end a lot of money is going to be wasted and if someone else sets out to solve the same problem we solved and stumbles across our obvious solution, they are going to get sued.
Re:Yet Another Reason... (Score:4, Interesting)
Software patents have been around for almost 30 years. You say they've destroyed innovation - do you have any evidence? I think computers have advanced pretty far since the 80s.
Straw man. The issue is whether 'software' has advanced, not "computers".
Computer hardware is not protected by software patents. Computer hardware is protected by patents on physical devices and physical processes.
The majority of profound changes to computing over the past 30 years have been in HARDWARE and in public software that is not covered by patents.
Your argument that "computers have advanced pretty far" is misleading and irrelevant.
I would not claim software patents have "destroyed innovation" but the onus for proving that software patents are justified is on the party who is making that claim. If you are merely claiming that software patents are LAWFUL, then perhaps you are correct, but if you are claiming software patents actually ENCOURAGE software inventions, you have no evidence and you need to provide it.
Patents are a limitation to freedom of expression and thus every single patent must be justifiable and every single law granting patents must be justifiable on the basis that it actually truly encourages the advancement of the art and knowledge into the public sphere and not merely the enrichment of private pockets.
You could probably find many software developers, myself included, who would say that software patents have done absolutely NOTHING to encourage us in this art.
The best evidence in favor of software patents would be if the vast majority of software writers (the people who actually practice the art), come forward and ask the state to grant us such monopoly rights. But it was not us who asked. Who are the famous computer scientists who made the most significant contributions to this field who have claimed it was patent law that encouraged them to invent software?
To lay people it hardly matters whether or not there are patents on certain technology. Patents are intended to encourage the CREATORS by giving us incentives. But software patents are shackles on us as well. The creators who are the ones who are advancing the art, are the ones who should be asked, not patent trolls, not patent lawyers. The purpose of patents is NOT so that anybody can make money. The purpose is to advance the art. The artists are the ones who know best what assistance the government can give (if any) to this objective.
PS: for the record, I'm in favor of copyright over software. (but limited to 14 years or something like that -- not the current absurd term of 70 years after death).
Re:Yet Another Reason... (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is, software patents don't really cover ideas. They actually cover specific implementations. In theory, anyway, they're no different than any other kind of patent.
In practice, they have been what amounts to an exemption from the need to include the actual preferred embodiment of the invention. So software patents have intentionally vague descriptions, flow charts, block diagrams, etc. that, while covering the preferred embodiment of the invention (one would hope), will also cover thousands of variations that would not infringe a properly written patent. Because of its complexity, and large companies pushing hard to not have to include source code, the software patent is really a mutant form of patent these days, very, very different than others. They need to go. Or judges need to be much more critical of vaguely written patents. There was never any intent for a software patent to be able to cover an idea, but that's the way they're flung around by the patent trolls these days.
It's also the goal of the patent writer (I've written a number of them) to seemingly claim nothing when writing the patent, and then be able to claim the world once the patent's granted. This is enhanced in software patents by the fact that the patent only loosely describes the invention, as mentioned above. But it's a flaw in all patents that there are two standards. When a patent is examined by the PTO, the examiner's main focus is on the description of the invention. They look over the claims, only to (hopefully) ensure they're backed up by the described invention. Once granted, the claims are what becomes interesting... an infringement suit will tell you (eventually.... they do like to play games) what claims you're actually supposed to be violating.