« Friction Weld | Main | Fear & Loathing »
July 29, 2011
Jolted Jelly
Rule
of law is a tidy concept, but in practice, gets shaken like landfill in an
earthquake - the consistency of jelly. The federal government is a monstrous
jelly-meister. In the U.S. plutocracy, every citizen is a government mule.
Corporations are special - tax breaks, bail outs, subsidies, and generous
license to damage the environment, but not so special as to escape sanction
whenever the government decides the business ecosystem is at risk. In the past
decade, nothing has quite stirred the government's urge to jar the jelly of
justice like patents. The courts simply steal patents from inventors when the
invention is too valuable; it's just a mule's cargo, after all. When
corporations own a portfolio that is too valuable, the U.S. Jelly Patrol
(Justice Department) jells itself for antitrust. Right now, the jewels from the
corpse of Nortel shimmer too brightly.
In Schumpeterian act of creative destruction, Nortel Netwoks went belly up, leaving only a legacy of patents, to be sold at auction. After an eye-watering "stalking horse" bid by Google of $900 million, the mindlessly named Rockstar Bidco, a consortium of six behemoths, paid $4.5 billion for the 6,000 patent portfolio. The six: Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Research in Motion, Sony and Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson.
Google was left out in the cold, and has publicly whined: "a sign of companies coming together not to buy new technology, not to buy great engineers or great products, but to buy the legal right to stop other people from innovating."
The Jelly Patrol had given Bidco to go-ahead, blithely saying that it didn't want to affect the outcome, but has since gotten jittery. The price tag, along with Apple joining in, jolted the Jelly Patrol, which is now asking the Bidco boys what exactly it plans to do with its booty.
Apple recently got the ITC to slap HTC upside the head for patent infringement for using Google's Android OS. Apple has other Android handset makers in court for infringing its own patents. The Nortel horde adds more firepower. Hence sleepless nights for the Jelly Patrol.
Ed Black, head honcho of the lobbying group Computer & Communications Industry Association, which has been Androidized, sees no difference between patent "use" and "misuse": "We're seeing a situation where big companies seem more willing to try to use, and in essence misuse, their patent portfolio in a really aggressive way to go after open-source products and weaker competitors. That's really troubling."
To the plutocrats, rule of law as jelly is nothing troubling. The only problem is having it jell for you.
Posted by Patent Hawk at July 29, 2011 6:27 PM | The Patent System