Verizon Infographics via PCMag: The Smartphone IP Battles ...
>> Infographics: Who’s suing who in the smartphone industry
Jonathan Radande
DroidMatters
January 25, 2012
droidmatters.com
PC Mag has obtained two great infographics that gives us a quick look at the current state of patent lawsuits that are currently taking place in the smartphone industry. As you probably know by now, there are many. Apple is suing everybody; Samsung, HTC, Motorola, LG, are all involved in suits, and much more.
On a panel at the State of the Net Conference in Washington, DC, PC Mag’s Sascha Segan got a chance to speak to Judge Theodore Essex of the International Trade Commission; Amy Hammer, assistant general counsel for Verizon; and Ray Chen of the US Patent & Trademark Office. The two charts were provided by Ammy Hammer. One chart shows the number of current patent-related lawsuits that are currently taking place; the second infographic shows the arsenal of patents that each of the major companies hold.
Take a look at the two graphics to get a better understanding of the current ridiculousness of the lawsuits currently taking place. In the end, what sticks out like a sore thumb is that Apple is taking everyone to court! ###
• Smartphone Competitor lawsuits
• Estimated Patent Arsenals
>> Infographic: Smartphone Patent Wars Explained
Sascha Segan
January 19, 2012
PCMag
pcmag.com
There's a war on, and it could hit your smartphone. A slew of lawsuits are rocking the smartphone industry as nearly every major manufacturer fights to get cash from the others for using its patents, to block its opponents' products from being imported into the U.S., or just to bleed out their energy paying for lawyers rather than engineers.
That could mean fewer smartphones, devices missing features, or a general slowdown of innovation in the future.
On a panel at the State of the Net Conference in Washington, DC this week, I spoke with Judge Theodore Essex of the International Trade Commission, who rules on smartphone patent cases; Amy Hammer, assistant general counsel for Verizon; and Ray Chen of the US Patent & Trademark Office. They all agreed the prospects for peace soon are bleak. The best possible outcome is mutually assured destruction, if the various smartphone players each assemble enough critical patents that they become unwilling to sue each other.
Verizon's Hammer gave us an amazing chart showing who's suing who, and who holds how many patents. Many of the suits, as you can see below, seem to come from Apple's stated decision to "go thermonuclear" on Android, as Steve Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson.
Apple's role could be even bigger than it may appear at first glance, because TechCrunch discovered in December that Apple may have a link to Digitude Innovations, a patent holding company that's suing RIM, HTC, Motorola, LG, Samsung, Sony, Amazon, Nokia, and Pantech.
Most of the suits involve huge technology companies suing each other. Of the names you might not know, "Graphics Properties Holdings," has patents from the now-defunct Silicon Graphics, an early pioneer in 3D computer graphics. Gemalto is the world's largest manufacturer of SIM cards. InterDigital is a 40-year-old company that helped invent many basic mobile phone technologies. VirnetX is a security company wrangling with Apple over VPN access technologies.
The second chart below shows who holds how many patents, and it's eye-opening. For one thing, it shows one reason why Google wanted to buy Motorola: to enhance Google's 760 patents with Motorola's library of 17,500.
But not all patents are equally useful as weapons of war. Patents considered essential to wireless standards are usually held in pools where they're required to be licensed on "reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms. Those can't be used to destroy an enemy. And a few critical patents—on multitouch technology, say—could outweigh thousands of obsolete patents.
Take a look at the two infographics here, courtesy of Verizon, to see the patent wars in action.
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- Eric - |
