Judge Posner Puts the Kabosh on Apple/Google Smartphone Patent Suit
“It’s not clear that we really need patents in most industries . . .. You just have this proliferation of patents. “It’s a problem.”
Judge Richard Posner, Silicon Valley MercuryNews.com, July 5, 2012
Do you recall the final scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail? After 90 minutes of farcical medieval/King Arthur-inspired humor the film concludes with a big attack scene (cliché visuals of swords, spears and knights in armor, opposing armies lined up in a field, battle music ….). King Arthur makes a Crusades-inspired speech and yells charge. Just as the armies are about to engage a police car pulls up with siren blaring. 20th century British bobbies jump out and arrest some of the knights, who put up no resistance. Others are simply told to go home. The war is cancelled. (video).
This is not very different from what just happened in the patent war between Apple and Motorola Mobility (owned by Google) over smartphone patents. In that case, initially filed in federal court in Wisconsin in late 2010, a year before Steve Jobs’ death, each side accused the other of multiple patent infringements. To put things in context, this case was part of the war against Google’s Android OS that Jobs initiated before his death. According to the Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs, Jobs stated that Android’s use of Apple’s ideas equated to “grand theft,” and that Jobs was “willing to go thermonuclear war on this.” He is also reported as saying that “I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank to right this wrong.” (both quotes referenced here).
When it was first filed in 2010, the case was assigned to a Wisconsin federal trial judge. In mid-2011, Google purchased Motorola Mobility (owner of the patents) for $12.5 billion, to strengthen its patent position with Android. In October 2011 Jobs passed away. Then, in December 2011, the case was hit by an earthquake: the case was re-assigned to Judge Richard Posner, an appellate judge on the 7th Circuit and possibly the most highly respected federal appellate judge in the country. According to reports Posner requested that the case be assigned to him. Hmmm, why did he do that? And why this case?
