Smart Phones and Trolls -- The Current State of the Patent Wars -- Levi Shapiro

Microsoft Apple and Blackberry unable to halt Androidamp8217s Smartphone dominance 81 global market share in Q3 2013 adopted a new tactic to topple Google becoming patent trolls Based on a portfolio of mobile patents acquired from Nortel in 2011 for 45 billion 750000 per patent their Rockstar consortium filed suit last week against Google Samsung and other Android players It will now be in the hands of a jury in the Eastern District of Texas a rural district whose overwhelming tendency to rule in favor of patent infringement has made it the most popular US jurisdiction for patent litigationIn reality despite suing and countersuing one another worldwide over the last few years little has been resolved Google further protected its patent position by acquiring Motorola last year and its 17000 mobile related patents So what is the future for Smartphone IP Marshall Phelps who previously led IP Strategy at both IBM and Microsoft shared his views this week at the AIPPI conference httpaippiorgil in Tel Aviv amp8220Within 10 years the Smartphone platform wars will be over replaced by a series of licensing arrangements I have seen estimates of 10amp8217s of thousands of patents implicated in the Smartphone situation With that much intellectual property involved no one can realistically build a Smartphone riskfree or without the IP of othersamp8221Today some 60 of patent litigation is driven by entities which do not produce anything or compete in any particular industry This group of patent litigators is referred to as amp8220NonPracticing Entitiesamp8221 or NPEamp8217sThe America Invents Act passed by Congress in 2011 was supposed to address some of the NPE litigation abuses According to Randall Rader Chief Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and another AIPPI speaker reform is needed to amp8220protect the benefits of a robust innovation policy and in part to simply correct injusticeamp8230the definition of troll will always be over inclusive or under inclusive to the detriment of justiceamp8221Trevor Cook Chairman of the British Copyright Council and Partner at Bird ampamp Bird cited the emerging importance of the Unified Patent Court in Europe and how it will affect patent litigation For example many believe the amp8220British modelamp8221 or imposing fee reversal in cases of abuse could limit some of the more egregious cases The US system does not force plaintiffs to pay the costs and fees of the defendantThe final word in the matter will be left to Steve Wozniak Appleamp8217s coFounder who recently told the BBC amp8220There are good things I see on Samsung phones that I wish were on my iPhone I wish everyone just did a lot of crosslicensing and sharing the good technology All our products would be better Weamp8217d go furtheramp8221 Until that happens the trolls have the advantageLevi Shapiro is a Partner at TMT Strategic Advisors a research and strategy firm focusing on the amp160technology media and telecom sectors He can be reached at levitmtstratcom or via twitter levshapiroRead all Levi39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Unleavened MediaCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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Smart Phones and Trolls -- The Current State of the Patent Wars -- Levi Shapiro

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