Nam flashbacks
The latest twist in the legal war between Apple and Google to gain the upper hand in the mobile platform market comes courtesy of Bloomberg, which reported that HTC has initiated a new round of legal action against Apple as a result of obtaining some patents from Google.
The first legal action initiated by Apple against Android targeted HTC, and set the pattern for using phone-makers as the battleground for a legal proxy war between the two companies, reminiscent of the nature of geopolitics for the past 70 years. If that first skirmish was akin to the Spanish Civil War, we're very much in a full-blown Cold War now.
According to the report Google itself had only got hold of these patents in the past year, with four coming from proposed acquisition Motorola, three from mobile Internet software company Openwave, and two from Palm - which must mean after it was acquired by HP. HTC is insisting it paid Google for the patents, but it was probably a token amount.
Google, of course, has a massive vested interest in giving Android OEMs has much patent weaponry as possible to help them fight Apple. The ever-reliable Florian Muller had a look at the patents in question, and his report reveals firstly how utterly arcane and pedantic many of these patents are - "method and apparatus for zoomed display of characters entered from a telephone keypad," for example.
Secondly the provenance of the patents demonstrates how disingenuous all these pious ‘we think people should develop their own stuff instead of ripping it off' statements are. Take the patent we highlighted above, here's its chain of owners: Phone-com, Openwave, Purple Labs, Myriad, Google, HTC.
While you could say Apple occupies the higher moral ground, as it's defending its own innovations, many of its claims are no less pedantic, so you could say it's forcing Google and its proxies to arm themselves in this way. Furthermore, lest we forget, Apple isn't restricting its attacks to patents, with much of its assault on Samsung focusing on merely the look of its products.
Having said that, patents are the chosen weapon in Apple's latest attack on Samsung, this time in Japan where its Galaxy range has been selling well of late. According to Reuters, Apple wants the usual suspension of sales plus damages.
Let's not forget that Google has another major front in its Android war, and this isn't a proxy one. The Oracle action accusing Android of infringing Java (which Oracle only acquired a year and a half ago) is coming to a head. According to Muller Oracle has offered to open settlement discussions with Google and put forward one of its two presidents - Safra Catz. Google, however wants the relatively junior Andy Rubin to represent it, which Oracle isn't happy about.
This isn't just about job titles, it seems, but authority. Being second only to CEO Larry Ellison, Catz has the power to make top-level decisions, while Rubin would probably have to refer such matters upwards. Given that Oracle is looking for a settlement amounting to several billion dollars per year, the Google representative needs to be able to make some pretty major decisions.
Lastly it's worth dwelling on yet another Muller post. He's been looking though a batch of court documents in the Oracle/Google case and found an apparent admission from Google that it favours OEMs who play ball with its own vision of Android over those who don't.
Here's a bullet-point from a Google document entitled "If we gave it away, how can we ensure we get benefit from it?" which apparently refers to Android. "Lead device concept: Give early access to the software to partners who build and distribute devices to our specification (ie, Motorola and Verizon). They get a non-contractual time to market advantage and in return they align to our standard."
Muller insists this is different from the Nexus scheme, in which a certain OEM is chosen to champion a new version of Android. He says this statement covers not just devices running vanilla Android - i.e. the Nexus ones, which have limited popular appeal - but those with OEM ‘skins' such as HTC Sense. In other words this is deliberate market distortion by Google in favour of its chosen OEMs, for which we can now read Motorola.
Notwithstanding its massive installed base and momentum, Android is looking more vulnerable than ever. It's possible that every Android device sold will have to pay off Microsoft, Oracle and Apple in future, making it far less economically viable for OEMs. The future of Android as the numerically dominant mobile platform hangs in the balance.
