Software rivals buying bogus patents hurt customers, Google says

David Drummond, senior vice president and chief legal officer of the internet giant, said companies such as Microsoft and Apple are "banding together" to acquire "bogus patents" for technology with the aim of driving up the cost of using Google's Android operating system.

Drummond said the "hostile, organised campaign" by Google's rivals was "anti-competitive".

"A smartphone might involve as many as 250,000 (largely questionable) patent claims, and our competitors want to impose a 'tax' for these dubious patents that makes Android devices more expensive for consumers," Drummond said in a blog post.

"They want to make it harder for manufacturers to sell Android devices. Instead of competing by building new features or devices, they are fighting through litigation. This anti-competitive strategy is also escalating the cost of patents way beyond what they’re really worth," Drummond said.

In June a group of software companies including Microsoft, Apple, Ericsson and Sony beat off a rival bid from a consortium including Google and Intel to purchase about 6,000 patents and patent applications from bankrupt telecoms firm Nortel.

The patents covered areas such as wireless 4G technology and data networking and cost the winning consortium of companies $4.5bn to acquire. Nortel's patent portfolio was originally estimated at $1bn, Drummond said.

Microsoft and Apple were also among a group of companies that outbid Google to buy patents belonging to enterprise infrastructure software specialists Novell last year.

The companies bought the Nortel and Novell patents "to make sure Google didn’t get them; seeking $15 licensing fees for every Android device; attempting to make it more expensive for phone manufacturers to license Android (which we provide free of charge) than Windows Phone 7; and even suing Barnes & Noble, HTC, Motorola, and Samsung," Drummond said.

Google had to "speak out" against its rivals' practices and the company is "looking intensely at a number of ways" to "preserve the Android operating system as a competitive choice for consumers, by stopping those who are trying to strangle it," Drummond said.

Google will try to combat "anti-competitve threats" by "strengthening" its own patent portfolio to protect consumers from rising costs for phones that support Android and to ensure they do not have "fewer choice for their next phone", Drummond said.

The company is "encouraged" by actions of the US Department of Justice (DoJ). The DoJ, a competition regulator in the US, forced Microsoft, Apple and other members of the winning Novell patent portfolio bid to make changes to the deal it made in originally acquiring the rights in April.

Together with a German competition regulator, the DoJ in April forced amendments that mean Novell's patents are available to licence through a system that the winning consortium of companies cannot limit access to.

The originally composed arrangements "would jeopardise the ability of open source software, such as Linux, to continue to innovate and compete in the development and distribution of server, desktop, and mobile operating systems, middleware, and virtualization products," the DoJ said at the time.

Google is also encouraged that the DoJ is "looking into whether Microsoft and Apple acquired the Nortel patents for anti-competitive means," Drummond said.

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that the DoJ was "intensifying" investigations into whether Microsoft, Apple and the other companies that acquired Nortel's patent rights were planning to "unfairly hobble competing smartphones using Google Android software".

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