Week 12 Post 2: Apple and Google (& Motorola)

According to Google's press release, there are two main reasons for its acquisition of Motorola


Benefits of the deal

• Google and Motorola Mobility together will accelerate innovation and choice in mobile computing. Consumers will get better phones at lower prices.

• Motorola Mobility’s patent portfolio will help protect the Android ecosystem. Android, which is open-source software, is vital to competition in the mobile device space, ensuring hardware manufacturers, mobile phone carriers, applications developers and consumers all have choices

And why Motorola? Through having "a long history of innovation", there are so many patents that can be utilized (see the following).

• Its many industry milestones include the introduction of the world’s first portable cell phone nearly 30 years ago, and the StarTAC–the smallest and lightest phone in the world when it was launched.

Motorola Mobility has a long history of innovation in communications technology and the development of intellectual property.
(http://www.google.com/press/motorola/)

Essentially, for a major part it is implied that, using a quote from Foss Patent, "Google thinks that anybody who owns tens of thousands of patents in this industry would be able to settle any infringement issues, no matter their scale, through cross-license agreements that involve little or no money." This theory is very much challenged (and later proved to be flawed) following subsequent lawsuits against various companies, some I have mentioned in previous blogposts, and the newest this: Apple Inc. (AAPL) won a patent- infringement case brought by Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Motorola Mobility unit over a phone sensor, averting an order that could have hindered imports of the iPhone 4 into the U.S. Summarizing everything in one sentence, Google might want to reconsider its patent strategy.