Motorola To Collect Royalties For Android

tlhIngan writes "It looks like Motorola wants to join in on the Android patent licensing fun enjoyed by Microsoft and others. (Yes, the same Motorola that makes Android phones.) Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha has stated they plan to collect licensing royalties from other Android manufacturers. Given Motorola's involvement in the mobile industry, they certainly do have the portfolio to go with it. It's interesting times ahead for Android."

Motorola did not invent the mobile phone!

[Anonymous Coward]

By no definition of what constitutes a mobile phone, did Motorola invent the mobile phone as is claimed by the article. They haven't even provided much refinements of pre-existing technology. They introduced the mobile phone to the US market, that's pretty much it. Next somebody claims that Bill Gates invented computers or operating systems.

The early history of mobile phone technology is shrouded in clouds. The Swedish military had mobile/portable phones in the 1930's, but they were likely not alone.

The development and introduction of a mobile phones for non-military use was almost exclusively done by Scandinavian actors. Beginning with the Swedish phones for use in cars and (more important) the technology for city wide mobile phone networks in the late 1940's, and culminating in the NMT system in 1981, that unified the different Scandinavian national network technologies into one, most of it already old and proven technology (the most important inovation of the NMT system, was the idea to dial the phone number and then connect to the phone net, not connect to the phone net and then dial the phone number, as had been done since the first automatic phone systems (also Scandinavian inventions, by the way, the first phones was invented and made by Italians, not Graham Bell (he copied the mechanism of his phone from an article in a paper) or any other US-American, just to set things straight)).

All mobile phone technology that have been invented after that, is just small refinements.

Android is a piece of software

[nten]

If Motorola is targeting Android manufacturers that implies that it is something about Android that is infringing Motorola's patents. Since Android only consists of software, the patents it is infringing by definition must be software patents.

Re:Motorola did not invent the mobile phone!

[scratchdiver]

Motorola invented the cellular "refinement" which enabled mobile telephony to be used by the general public. Prior to this, mobile phone capacity was less than 100 channels for a large metropolitan area, so they couldn't be used widely. On the old "car phone" system, which was actually just a conventional two way full duplex radio, prices for airtime and equipment were huge, and the transmit power was much larger than today's standard by a factor of 20 or more, and the prior systems had no automated coordination of channels/frequencies it was basically old Mabel at the switchboard connecting the other end of your jumbo mobile two-way radio (why the fuck didn't you bring up Marconi? Oh yeah he wasn't Swedish either) to the switched landline network. Motorola changed all that, with a shared network controlled through automation. This technology was invented by a team lead by Dr. Martin Cooper in the early 1970s, at Motorola. Motorola also invented the clam shell/flip phone form factor, with the microTac in 1989. Before this, hand held cellular mobile phones were "brick" devices such as the DynaTac, oh yeah, also invented by Motorola in 1983 (actually 1973, but FCC acceptance became final in 1983). Get your nationalistic head out of the sand and give credit where it's due. And no, I don't work for Motorola.