Google In Battle With Its Own Lawyers 271
An anonymous reader writes "Google is at daggers end with a law firm it's been using since 2008, after discovering that lawyers in the law firm, named Pepper Hamilton LLP, were representing a patent licensing business that sued Google's Android partners last month. Google has claimed that Pepper Hamilton LLP never provided notice that it was hired by Digitude Innovations LLC, the firm that filed patent infringement complaints against Google's business allies."
If that is true, they could be screwed! (Score:2, Interesting)
If that happened in my state and Google wanted to push it to the end, that firm could lose its firm license and the lawyers in charge could lose their licenses too.
But then again, my state takes conflicts of interest very seriously.
Re:Concurrent COI (Score:5, Interesting)
The only problem with this is that no one has sued Google, outside of Oracle. The cases were against other companies and not Google itself. It's definitely dishonest, but then again it's lawyers. They probably have plenty of wiggle room to steer clear of any real problems.
Re:An outside law firm ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Disney has a market cap of $71.86 billion. News Corp (owns Fox Entertainment Group which owns 20th Century Fox) has a market cap of $50 billion. Sony (owns Sony Pictures) has a market cap if $19 billion. Comcast market cap $74 billion (owns Universal Pictures.) Time Warner (owns Warner Bros. Pictures) market cap $38 billion. I've no idea what Viacom is worth as they're private. The five publicly traded companies have a combined market cap of $252 billion.
Google has $44 billion in cash. Facebook's IPO hopes to raise $5 billion. Not only could they not "buy out the whole MAFIAA with little leverage", they couldn't do it even if they sold their souls. And it's unlikely anyone would want to buy those two souls. FB will have P/E of 166, GOOG's P/E is 20. Two of the most profitable companies in the world don't have such high P/E ratios. (AAPL P/E is 13 & XOM P/E is 10.)
Re:Lesson of the day: (Score:0, Interesting)
No, they do one other thing, which is the thing people hate them for: They self-replicate.
Are you talking about lawyers or techs?
You need a Java developer. And an Oracle DBA. And a Linux admin. And a Windows server admin. And someone to babysit your NetApp. And a network admin. And a .NET person. And on, and on, and on.
And then they still tell you that you need consultants because upgrading a critical part of infrastructure is very complicated.
See? Easy to make global rationalizations. In fact, you could take just about any comment in this thread and apply it or twist it pretty easily to apply to techs. Example: someone said never trust anyone in a suit. How about "never trust a neckbeard"? Just as sensible.
The post below this one, as I'm typing, says "most of those laws you need lawyers to deal with were written by lawyers". Well, golly, who'd have thought that? Just parse it for a second and see how stupid this is. Most of the technology you need techs to deal with was invented by techs. Most of the medical procedures you need doctors to perform were written by doctors.
Wake Up, Google! (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't you just hate it when you strengthen a system, like patents, and it gets worse, and you strengthen it even more, and it gets worse, and you strengthen it still more, and it gets worse?
Psst -- Google, Apple, Motorola, Microsoft, IBM -- come here, I want to tell you something.
When the machine that you have built is moving too much revenue from the producers to the inventors; you can fix it by making it move less revenue from the producers to the inventors. When producing for the customer is paying less and less, and having lawyers and patents is paying more and more, and it is leading to wild legal thickets that make it unattractive to produce things for the customer, the system is out of balance. Much like copyright, the answer to a malfunctioning patent system is not always stricter patents. Sometimes the answer is weaker patents. You should be able to see that pretty clearly from where you are standing. Just open your damned eyes.
You are getting hoist by your own petard. Wake up and figure it out, already. You own the government now, so we can't do anything to help you. You've got to tell the legislators you own to cut back on patent strength, or you -- and all of us, not that you give a shit -- but you are going to lose all you have built.
Ask yourself this: Are we having more problems with companies not bothering to come up with cool new patentable things? Or are we having more problems with companies squabbling over who is allowed to build which things? If the bigger problem is the latter, it means we need to reduce the rate of revenue flow or we will all lose. It is actually a pretty easy thing to control through patent policy -- strengthen it, more revenue flows, weaken it, less revenue flows; like a faucet -- you just have to open your eyes and recognize the problem.
There is something wrong with my lawyer ... (Score:5, Interesting)
In my experience lawyers exist to extract money from clients.
When I told my lawyer that I needed a EULA for an iPhone / iPad app [perpenso.com] and gave him a list of concerns, he called me back 15 minutes later to say that Apple's App Store EULA covers third parties like me and that my listed concerns are covered there. That I didn't need my own EULA.
There must be something wrong with my lawyer, he served me well rather than extract the maximum amount of money. YMMV.
Re:Lesson of the day: (Score:4, Interesting)
The biggest source of lobbying for software patents are companies like MS and groups like the Business Software Alliance
What makes you think they want software patents? They're the ones having to pay record damage awards to patent trolls. At best they're agnostic.
Granted Microsoft has been getting into the patent trolling business with Android to some extent, but that isn't evidence of software companies wanting software patents, it's evidence of patent trolls wanting them: Any company that collects more revenue from patent licensing than they do from selling their own software is no longer a software company.
Re:An outside law firm ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Somewhere along the way, people began to substitute RIAA with MPAA, then MAFIAA. That's false - the movie industry is much, much larger than the record industry. (Incidentally, you should be pricing just the subdivisions which make movies when talking about the MPAA, not the parent company.)
Generally though, slashdotters see the RIAA as much more evil than the MPAA. I mean they're both on the wrong side of the copyright debate, but the movie industry at least prices a 90 minute Blu-ray/DVD for ~$20 which took a staff of thousands to make. They have a thriving movie rental business model, as well as a pay per view model (essentially streamed movies). They're adapting to new technology and developments in their business. Maybe not in ways we always agree with, but at least they're trying.
The record industry OTOH wants about ~$15 for a 45 minute CD album which took a staff of a few dozen to make. They fought tooth and to kill DATs (succeeded) and MP3s (failed). And the royalties they "negotiated" with Internet streaming companies are so ridiculously high it basically drove them out of business. Of the two branches of the *AA, the RIAA is much, much worse. Which is why the meme about tech companies just buying them out began.
Re:Lesson of the day: (Score:4, Interesting)
Not so much a profession as as a psychological disorder
Can we go so far as to call it a Pathological condition?
Re:So, (Score:2, Interesting)
IAAL. And that Lincoln quote is something I read to my clients, every time, when they're thinking about filing a lawsuit.
Been going on for over half a century. (Score:5, Interesting)
In 1958, my grandfather worked for Purina and was severely injured falling four stories down an elevator shaft. The elevator had no doors. He was a complete invalid until he died ten years later. His and my grandmother's lives were living hells.
Grandma spoke to a few lawyers in the area, all of whom told her she she had no case, despite Purina's obvious negligence.
My dad found out later that Purina had every lawyer in the state on its payroll. It's disgusting what lawyers who are owned by soulless corporations will do for their dirty money.