Android patent controversy. Google’s dominant mobile OS platform is facing the heat of patent wars and other tech giants are colluding to cripple Androids growth by imposing patent infringement lawsuits.
David Drummond, Senior VP and Chief Legal Officer at Google recently wrote a piece at Official Google blog about how Android, Google’s dominant Mobile OS platform is facing the heat of Patent Wars and how other tech giants like Microsoft, Apple and Oracle are colluding to cripple Android’s growth by imposing Patent infringement lawsuits and also forcing Android handset manufacturers to pay huge royalty(upto $15 per sale) to Microsoft and other patent owners.
Google has been arguing that Android platform has been growing at an unbeatable pace(over half a million activations per day) with countless handset options and both Apple and Microsoft are getting restless about Android’s growth and want to stop this growing phenomenon, by hook or crook.
As per Google, Apple won’t surrender its policy of remaining ‘closed’ and ‘pricey’ and with that in perspective, it just can’t beat Android in the long run. Microsoft’s Windows Phone, on the other hand, is too late to the party and lacks on too many aspects compared to Android mobile OS.
So, instead of competing by innovation, Microsoft and Apple are now more interested in putting Android down with patent lawsuits and inhibiting Android’s growth in the days to come.
But before media could sympathize with Google on this Patent Wars saga, Microsoft threw a bombshell on Google, busting claims that Google has been making regarding this so-called collaborative three-way patent war against Google Android.
Moments after Google’s David posted on Google blog regarding patent controversy, there came out a tweet from a key Microsoft guy, Brad Smith, Microsoft General Counsel. He tweeted..
“Google says we bought Novell patents to keep them from Google. Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no,”
That single tweet summed up pretty much everything and revealed the ugly truth behind Google’s stance over Android patent controversy.
We won’t say Google’s completely wrong in its assertions but from this two-way war of words, we’re at least confirmed that both parties have been playing this game really smart and none of them has a clean case here. Rather, Microsoft’s case seems far more logical and straightforward in the eyes of Judiciary.