Google’s Android operating system may be the rock star of mobile world, but it has another group of rock stars that are trying to knock it from its perch.
Google, Samsung, HTC and basically every major Android hardware manufacturer have been hit with a patent lawsuit from the Rockstar Consortium, a group jointly owned by the likes of Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Ericsson and Sony based on patents acquired from the Nortel bankruptcy auction in 2011. The suits were filed last week in the U.S. District Court, Eastern Texas Division.
Google tried to purchase the Nortel patents during the auction in 2011. How serious its interest was at the time has been brought into question, as some view that Google was just trying to drive up the price of the patents for its competitors. The portfolio of about 4,000 patents sold to the Rockstar group for about $4.5 billion. Google later bought Android manufacturer Motorola for $12.5 billion in what is believed to be a bid to acquire its nearly 17,000 mobile related patents.
Google is accused of infringing seven patents. Rockstar insists that Google, despite its attempt to purchase the Nortel patents, is willfully violating the patents in question. The patents go after Google’s core business covering technology that matches Internet search terms with advertising. The Android manufacturers are accused of infringing seven patents that are generally broad strokes of common computer use such as “Managing a Virtual Private Network” and “System and Method for Notifying a User of an Incoming Communication Event” as well as concept for a navigation tool for graphical user interfaces (GUI).
Samsung, HTC, Asus, Pantech, Huawei, ZTE and LG are all being sued individually by the Rockstar Consortium.
Rockstar will likely be looking for patent licensing deals with all the companies involved or a large cash settlement. It is unclear from the filings if Rockstar would pursue injunctions against the Android manufacturers.
What Exactly Is Rockstar?
The Rockstar Consortium is a company that was created after Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Ericsson and Sony purchased the Nortel patents at a bankruptcy auction in 2011. It operates as an individual unit from those companies and has worked over the past two years to reverse engineer many of the patents in its portfolio and determine what companies may be infringing.
According to Rockstar, that’s just about everybody that has ever made technology that works on or off the Internet.
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