Why Google lashed out at Apple and Microsoft

Android is in deep trouble on the patent front, and its top lawyer knows it

Source: Google

Google's (GOOG) chief legal counsel's angry screed on the company's official blog in which he accuses Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT) of waging a hostile, organized, anti-competitive campaign against Android through dubious and bogus patents (adjectives all his) may be remembered as one of the most misguided briefs any high-tech lawyer has ever written.

Not that David Drummond is wrong about Google's competitors using the patent system to fight Android. They are. It's that he doesn't have a leg to stand on. Let us count the reasons why.

• Drummond accuses Google's competitors of overpaying for "bogus" patents. But if Nortel's 6,000 patents were bogus, why did Google start the bidding at nearly $1 billion and why was it willing to pay nearly the full $4.5 billion they eventually went for? (See Apple takes the patent wars seriously. Google not so much.)
• He accuses Microsoft and Apple of "get[ting] into bed" to keep Google from getting access to key patents. But Microsoft says Google turned down its offer to jointly bid for some Novell patents, and it has the e-mail to prove it.
• Drummond's post is titled "When patents attack Android." But as Daring Fireball's John Gruber suggests, "It's not 'patents' that are attacking Android. It's competing companies whose patents Google has violated — and whose business Android undermines — who are attacking Android."

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Posted in: Android, Andy Rubin, Apple, David Drummond, Google, iPhone, Larry Page, Microsoft, Mobile, Nortel, Patents, Sergey Brin

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  But it was Google's Android partners -- the HTCs, Motorolas and Samsungs of the world -- that MORE

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  On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple had joined the crowd of companies bidding for the telephony MORE

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