Ericsson's pseudo-sale of patents to Unwired Planet and the rampant problem of privateering

In the first half of this decade, the biggest and most divisive issue in the information and communications technology (ICT) was FRAND: fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing of standard-essential patents (SEPs). That issue hasn't gone away completely. Courts and regulators provided some clarification (in Microsoft v. Motorola, for example). Still, companies will continue to disagree on what constitutes a FRAND offer, on the proper royalty base, on the extent to which standard-setting organizations (SSOs) such as the IEEE should provide guidance, and on circumstances that may or may not warrant an injunction over SEPs. But all of this has a lower profile now.

The biggest ICT patent issue in the second half of this decade is "privateering": the act of large companies feeding trolls with patents in order to maximize their patent monetization income and/or drive up their competitors' total cost of defense. Quite often this raises FRAND issues as well. Many privateering deals involve SEPs and are part of a scheme to circumvent FRAND licensing obligations.

Centuries ago, privateers were pirates who colluded with governments. I recommend two articles, a Bloomberg story from 2013 and a more recent blog post by the von Mises economic institute, that discuss the problem and start with how Queen Elizabeth I of England commissioned Francis Drake to plunder Spanish merchant vessels. Privateers had to share their booty with the governments that backed them.

Today's patent-based privateering is a rampant problem plaguing the industry. The Bloomberg article I just linked to mentioned transactions involving patents held by Alcatel-Lucent, BT, Ericsson, and Nokia--and those are just a few examples. Furthermore, privateering is one of the issues the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating in connection with patent assertion entities (PAEs).

Patents are transferable assets. There are good-faith, genuine patent transfers--and there are transactions of the kind that is styled as a sale but in commercial terms comes down to an arrangement under which a patent assertion entity is essentially a licensing and litigation service provider to the operating company.

Let's start with what a genuine asset sale looks like. If a company or private person sells a used car, it ceases to have any ongoing interest in the car. Such an agreement doesn't restrict the ways in which the purchaser uses the car; it doesn't even prevent the purchaser from selling it to a third party; and the buyer has to pay a (specific) price.

Naturally, a patent transfer has certain additional aspects. If third parties have already been extended a license to a patent or a portfolio, the acquirer must know about and respect those licenses. Also, the seller may want to continue to use the patented inventions. And the purchase price may have a variable component that gives the seller some upside if the patents prove more valuable than originally expected. But apart from that, the structure of a genuine patent sale resembles that of a genuine car sale.

On the website of the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States I have found a filing--a redacted version of a "Master Sale Agreement" between Ericsson and Unwired Planet over more than 2,000 wireless patents--that is essentially a privateering case study. I looked this up since Unwired Planet's German lawsuits against Google, HTC, Huawei and Samsung over six of the related patents will go to trial in the coming months. It was much easier than I thought to google the deal terms.

I wish to point out that it's not my objective to engage in "Ericsson bashing." Just like last year, when I wrote about an Ericsson slide deck that explains the (bad) reasons for which the Swedish company doesn't extend patent licenses to chipset makers, it's about behavior that is by no means unique to Ericsson. Ericsson (or, in this case, Unwired Planet) just happens to be particularly transparent about it. Even Apple once sold patents to a non-practicing entity (which I believe Apple wouldn't do again since it has meanwhile had to defend itself against at least one privateer). The undisputed number one patent troll feeder in the world is not Ericsson but another Northern European company: Nokia has engaged in various such transactions, and if I were an antitrust regulator, I'd want to ensure that Nokia won't sell any of Alcatel-Lucent's patents to patent assertion entities after the closing of that acquisition. I'll talk some more about Nokia's privateering on another occasion.

I've read the redacted version of the Ericsson-Unwired Planet deal in detail. A couple of structural elements are clearly very different from a traditional sale.

Section 3, Purchase Price, does not state any amount Unwired Planet had to pay upfront. Instead, Ericsson receives a percentage of whatever revenue Unwired Planet will generate with those patents:

(i) 20% of the amount of Cumulative Gross Revenue, until the Cumulative Gross Revenue equals $100,000,000; plus

(ii) 50% of the amount of Cumulative Gross Revenue in excess of $100,000,000, until the Cumulative Gross Revenue equals $500,000,000; plus

(iii) 70% of the amount of Cumulative Gross Revenue in excess of $500,000,000.

The relatively low percentage Ericsson receives on the first $100 million makes it easier for Unwired Planet to recuperate its litigation expenses. Then the percentage goes up to 50%, and above $500 million (i.e., in the event of a significant licensing success), Ericsson receives the lion's share: 70%.

Percentages like that remind me of what I've read about agency deals. For example, when sports bodies commercialize the broadcasting rights related to their events through agencies, this kind of revenue sharing is normal. But this is just not the way a "sale" in the traditional sense works.

The agreement also comes with all sorts of restrictions on the acquirer's business, a right of first refusal on any sale of the patents to a third party, and a "poison pill" for the event of an acquisition: in the event of a change of control of Unwired Planet, Section 3.3 allows Ericsson to terminate the agreement and to demand a "Sale Payment" for its patents, which according to 3.3(c) shall "in no event [...] be less than an amount equal to (x) $1,050,000,000 minus (y) the aggregate amount of all Quarterly Payments actually received by [Ericsson before]." It can be even more based on a valuation of those patents at the relevant time.

Let's connect the dots: Ericsson is convinced that the patents transferred under that agreement are worth, at a minimum, more than $1 billion, but it "sells" them to Unwired Planet based purely on a percentage of future revenues.

If Ericsson had kept those patents, it would have licensed them to other companies as part of its portfolio. That would have been most efficient for everyone, but Ericsson doesn't want to optimize efficiency: it seeks to maximize its patent monetization income, and it apparently believes that even a substantial de facto "agency fee" it pays to Unwired Planet is more than offset by the incremental bottom-line licensing cost to the likes of Google, HTC, Huawei, and Samsung. Ericsson may even think that its portfolio is so large that 2,000 patents more or less don't make any difference for the royalties Ericsson can obtain from licensees, but it's a large enough portfolio that Unwired Planet can go out and demand some additional percentage that is then shared with Ericsson.

Schemes like that give patent licensing--and patent transfers--a bad name.

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Google files first patent infringement suit in company history to hit back at BT

The next time Google founder and CEO Larry Page is asked about his company's stance on patent litigation he won't be able to repeat what he said at the Google Zeitgeist conference in September 2011: "We've never sued anyone over patents."

When Mr. Page made this claim, the statement had to be interpreted rather narrowly to be considered accurate. A few weeks earlier HTC had sued Apple over nine patents it received from Google for this purpose. The deal structure was so unlike a genuine patent purchase that the ITC later threw out all Google patents HTC was trying to use against Apple in that forum.

A few months after that Zeitgeist talk, in January 2012, Google authorized a Motorola Mobility lawsuit against Apple over six patents in the Southern District of Florida. The merger agreement was publicly available and absolutely unequivocal about the fact that Motorola needed Google's consent prior to bringing new IP assertions while the merger was under antitrust review. Since May 2012 Motorola Mobility is a wholly-owned Google subsidiary, so any patent infringement suits Motorola Mobility may have brought somewhere in the world since the closing of the deal would also have to be viewed as a Google patent lawsuit. Other jurisdictions are not as transparent as the United States, so I wouldn't rule out that some Motorola lawsuits filed against Apple and/or Microsoft since the closing of the deal will surface somewhere.

But as of yesterday, one doesn't even have to evoke HTC or Motorola to find an example of Google suing someone over patents. Yesterday Google filed a patent infringement complaint against BT (British Telecom) in the Central District of California (that's basically L.A.) over four patents. CNET published the complaint. Reuters was first to report, and its story indicates that there's actually been more than just this one Google lawsuit, mentioning a filing by Google's Motorola Mobility as well.

Two of the patents-in-suit, U.S. Patent No. 5,581,703 and U.S. Patent No. 5,701,465, relate to "reserving system resources to assure quality of service". These two patents were acquired from IBM, as was U.S. Patent No. 7,460,558 relating to "connection capacity reassignment in a multi-tier data processing system network". The fourth patent-in-suit, U.S. Patent No. 6,807,166 on a "gateway for internet telephone", originally belonged to Fujitsu.

In a press statement quoted by multiple reports Google justified its departure from its (save Motorola and HTC) defensive policies of the past with the fact that "BT has brought several meritless patent claims against Google and our customers -- and they've also been arming patent trolls". I reported on BT's six-patent lawsuit in December 2011, allegations by Google (filed in October 2012) that a non-practicing entity named Suffolk Technologies was suing it as a front for BT, and last month another NPE, named Steelhead Licensing, asserted a (former) BT patent against many industry players, including several Android device makers, one of which is Google's Motorola Mobility.

Considering that Google complained about BT "arming patent trolls" it would have been more appropriate for Google to sue BT, or have third parties sue BT, over homegrown Google patents. But Google is asserting three former IBM patents and one former Fujitsu patent. Google's statement does not explain why it's fine for IBM and Fujitsu to arm Google but unacceptable that BT sells some of its intellectual property to third parties (no matter what the intentions behind such transactions may be).

Credibility is a lesser concern here. The biggest problem Google's first offensive patent lawsuit in its own name faces is a tactical one called asymmetric exposure. Google is suing BT in the US and the UK. In the US there are some parts of BT's global multiprotocol network and it's selling certain services there, but it's not its largest market, while the US is the largest market for Google. Google is also suing BT in the UK, which is obviously BT's number one market, but the UK is a jurisdiction in which patent holders rarely win, and if they win at all, it's not a country where you have juries that render billion-dollar damages verdicts.

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NPE asserts foundational British Telecom patent against Apple, RIM, Android companies, carriers

BT (British Telecommunications) continues to aggressively monetize its wireless patent portfolio through direct and indirect litigation against other industry players. Today a non-practicing entity named Steelhead Licensing LLC filed a host of simultaneous lawsuits in the District of Delaware over a foundational wireless patent that belonged to BT until very recently, and I'd be very surprised if BT wasn't going to get a large cut of any licensing income Steelhead is now going to generate. The complaints were filed against nine handset makers (Apple, HTC, Kyocera, LG, Motorola Mobility, NEC, Pantech, RIM, Sony, ZTE) and five carriers (AT&T, MetroPCS, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile).

The patent-in-suit is U.S. Patent No. 5,491,834 on a "mobile radio handover initiation determination". The complaints allege that devices implementing the 3G (UMTS) or 4G (LTE) cellular standards infringe this patent when performing a handover from one cell to the next -- it's hard to think of a more basic element of cellular wireless networks. It's unclear whether this patent is subject to any FRAND pledge made by BT with respect to standard-essential patents.

As of the time of publication of this post, the official assignment record for the patent still has only one entry: the original assignment by the inventor to British Telecommunications (presumably his then-employer) back in 1993. Steelhead Licensing now claims to own all substantial rights, so I'm sure an assignment by BT to Steelhead will soon be recorded in the USPTO assignments database. The reason for which the assignment doesn't appear in that database yet is presumably just a minor administrative delay.

Two months ago Google complained about BT using a patent troll as a front. BT is also suing Google directly over a number of patents.

I'm not going to follow Steelhead's lawsuits in detail unless any exceptionally interesting issues concerning post-transfer assertions of FRAND-pledged patents (if the patent-in-suit is an SEP, which is at least a possibility based on how the complaints are worded) come up as litigation unfolds.

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Google complains about British Telecom using a troll the way Google uses HTC

Due to my focus on litigation between large operating companies, I rarely find the time to look at disputes involving smaller players and, particularly, non-practicing entities (NPEs). But a friendly patent litigator (whose firm is, to the best of my knowledge, not involved with any of the lawsuits I cover) sent me a publicly-accessible court filing that caught my interest because it relates to a legal issue of increasing importance in big-company disputes: the question of standing (the right to sue) after patent transfers.

This year, the ITC threw out five patents that Google had formally assigned to HTC, which immediately assert them against Apple, the reason for the dismissal being that Google retained some substantial rights in those patents, including the apparently unfettered right to grant sublicenses.

Four other patents that were (sort of) transferred under the same agreement are still at issue in a case HTC brought against Apple in Delaware. That district court will soon decide on Apple's motion to dismiss those patents and, as a result, an entire federal lawsuit.

Interestingly, the same Google that engaged in this kind of dubious dealing with HTC appears to advocate a very high standard for standing when it's on the receiving end of litigation. The filing I mentioned above is an October 26, 2012 motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by recently-founded NPE Suffolk Technologies, LLC against Google and AOL in the Eastern District of Virginia in June. The two patents-in-suit, U.S. Patent No. 6,334,132 on a "method and apparatus for creating a customized summary of text by selection of sub-sections thereof ranked by comparison to target data items" and U.S. Patent No. 6,081,835 on an "Internet server and method of controlling an [I]nternet server", used to belong to British Telecom (BT), which set off a chain of transfers involving, among other entities, a BT subsidiary, a patent monetization firm named IPValue (with which BT has been working closely since 2001), and ultimately the current owner and plaintiff, Suffolk, which according to the joint Google-AOL motion "came into being, and acquired its rights in the asserted patents, as part of IPValue's program of generating revenue for British Telecom". A 2001 press release stated that "[t]he new venture hopes to generate revenues of $100m per annum within six years by licensing BT's extensive array of patents in areas such as telecommunications, multimedia and wireless".

Google was already approached about those patents, by BT and IPValue, in 2008, prior to all these transfers. Google now speculates that "[w]hen those discussions did not go as it had hoped, British Telecom--apparently unwilling to participate in any potentially ensuing litigation and related document preservation and discovery obligations--transferred the asserted patents to its subsidiary BT Newgate LLC via intermediary companies". This claim has a plausibility problem: BT is also suing Google directly -- over six other patents in a litigation it brought in December 2011. BT must have had other reasons, such as limited bandwidth in its litigation department, for partnering with Suffolk. One of those possible reasons is that it's difficult to assert large numbers of patents in U.S. courts, which generally consolidate cases across districts and pressure plaintiffs to narrow their cases. Apple's enforcement efforts against HTC -- with 32 patents-in-suit waiting for adjudication in federal court -- is a good example.

Google alleges that "[b]y reserving numerous substantial rights for itself, [...] British Telecom has made it such that Suffolk does not have standing to maintain this suit". This is precisely what Apple argued in the ITC investigation of HTC's second complaint and is still arguing in federal court in Delaware.

Just like Apple felt that the whole purpose of the Google-HTC patent deal was just for HTC to sue Apple on Google's behalf, Google now says that "even a cursory review of the contractual arrangements shows that what Suffolk has it at best a mere 'hunting license' to act as British Telecom's agent in licensing". According to Google, British Telecom "may want to use Suffolk as a convenient shell entity".

Google mostly argues with U.S. case law on standing, but it also says, more generally, that "in any case these arrangements [between BT and Suffolk] also violate public policy", essentially arguing that this is not in line with the goals and principles of patent law.

The motion is heavily redacted and provides even less information about the alleged deficiencies of the BT-Suffolk deal than the non-redacted parts of the Apple-HTC standing dispute revealed. Maybe Google is right and BT retained one or more of the substantial rights that Suffolk would need to have in order to sue. If so, the pot is calling the kettle black.

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Companies worth $1 trillion are suing others over Android's alleged patent infringement

On Friday it became discoverable that Fujifilm, a Japanese company, has sued Google subsidiary Motorola Mobility for Android's alleged infringement of four of its patents. So far, Fujifilm has mostly played a defensive role in patent litigation, bringing declaratory judgment actions or countersuits. But after trying unsuccessfully since April 2011 to work out a license deal, it became the eighth company with a multi-billion dollar market capitalization to assert intellectual property rights against Android in court.

I have looked at Fujifilm's complaint, and it describes the scope of its four asserted patents in extremely broad terms. If Fujifilm really believes to have monopolized, for one particularly outrageous example, the idea of "a telephone that can communicate with other devices (e.g., a computer) over a path other than the telephone network", such as over WiFi, then its demands may have been out of line and Motorola Mobility may have been forced to take its chances in litigation. It's very likely that those patents will be narrowed dramatically, if not invalidated in their entirety, during the course of litigation. But it's too early to talk too much about the merits of this lawsuit. Claim construction and summary judgment will provide some more clarity between now and a possible trial.

What I'm more interested in at this stage is a certain phenomenon. Android continues to be an IP infringement lawsuit magnet not just with respect to troll lawsuits (the trolls sue everyone including Apple) but, more importantly, lawsuits from large publicly-traded industry players. Apart from reactive or preemptive lawsuits brought by Android device makers against Apple, the only large companies to have sued Apple in recent years are Eastman Kodak and Nokia. Apple and Nokia settled more than a year ago. That's it. But eight large publicly-traded companies are currently embroiled in litigation with Android companies (be it Google or its device maker partners) over Android's alleged infringement of intellectual property rights. Seven of those companies have brought patent infringement claims; one of them, eBay, has asserted trade secrets, a different kind of intellectual property right.

If I exclude eBay (which closed on Friday with a market capitalization of $51.58 billion), the other seven large companies (all of whom assert patents, and a couple of them additionally other categories of IP) have a collective market capitalization, based on Friday's closing, of $1.06 trillion. Here's a list of those companies in chronological order of each company's first patent infringement lawsuit targeting Android:

• Apple (AAPL): $565.68 billion

• Oracle (ORCL): $144.42 billion

• Microsoft (MSFT): $246.9 billion

• Gemalto (PINK:GTOMY): $6.52 billion

• British Telecom (BT): $27.02 billion

• Nokia (NOK): $6.89 billion

• Fujifilm (PINK:FUJIY): $8.47 billion

By comparison, Google's market capitalization is $188 billion.

The companies who claim that Google's Android infringes on their intellectual property are too diverse to believe in a conspiracy. And I repeat myself: apart from reactive or proactive countersuits from Android companies, Apple doesn't face much of a problem with big-company lawsuits. Does it do a better job at steering clear of infringement than Google does? Does it do a better job at working out license deals or non-aggression pacts with others in the industry? Honestly, I don't know what Apple does because they obviously don't tell the public what their dealings with other industry players are like. But whatever they do, they show that the commercial success of a platform is only one of the relevant factors. Android's IP issues are not simply a function of its market share. There must be some more fundamental problems.

Google's defensive abilities are admirable, but it can't fend off all of those assertions. I recently published a list of 11 Apple and Microsoft patents that courts in different jurisdictions ruled were both valid and infringed by Android.

As an Android user, I would like to see Google address those problems more effectively. When I look at public statements made by Google officials, it sometimes seems that the company is, at different levels, in a state of denial concerning Android's intellectual property issues. 11 months ago, Google announced its merger agreement with Motorola Mobility. By now, it becomes clearer and clearer that this acquisition is not the answer.

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British Telecom withdraws triple damages claim and certain allegations against Google to avoid delay

In December, British Telecom sued Google in the District of Delaware, alleging the infringement of six BT patents by various Google services and Android.

Google had until February 21 to respond to BT's complaint and, on that day, brought a motion to dismiss BT's claims of indirect and willful infringement. Google's legal argument basically came down to saying that BT can't bring allegations based on the notion that Google would acquire knowledge of the patents-in-suit at the time of the filing of the complaint. BT's claims contained passages such as "Google has infringed and continues to infringe, and following filing will be willfully infringing, [...]" and "Google's continuation of past practices following receipt of this Complaint will constitute inducement of infringement and/or contributory infringement and give rise to indirect, as well as direct, infringement". While such wordings don't rule out that Google may have had knowledge of those patents even prior to its receipt of the complaint, they suggest that the filing of the complaint could mark the beginning of a period with respect to which Google would be liable on those grounds. I haven't seen that kind of theory in any other litigation, to be honest.

On Friday (March 9, 2012), BT stated its opposition to Google's motion but simultaneously amended its complaint so as to render Google's motion moot. In addition to filing the amended complaint, BT also provided the court with a redlined version that shows what changed. It all came down to the removal of the kinds of passages I quoted above, as well as the related prayers for relief, including a request for a "trebling of damages pursuant to 35 U.S.C. §284" (willful infringement).

BT's motion argues that Google's concerns have been addressed, even though BT doesn't agree and expressly reserves the right to reassert those counts "as discovery progresses". I believe this means that BT will again assert inducement of infringement, contributory infringement and willful infringement if any evidence of such violations comes up (BT must mean evidence from the time before BT filed its lawsuit).

PThose allegations based on the notion of post-filing knowledge were a waste of almost three months from BT's perspective. Google won't be able to solve the problem with stalling alone, and BT doesn't appear to be in a major hurry (otherwise it wouldn't have picked the District of Delaware, which isn't a rocket docket), but it did the right thing by ensuring that Google would now have to respond to the substance of the complaint.

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British Telecom sues Google over six U.S. patents allegedly infringed by Android and various Google services

After Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, and eBay, British Telecommunications plc (commonly referred to as "British Telecom" or simply "BT") has just become the fifth large publicly-traded company to bring patent infringement litigation against Android. (By "large" I mean companies with a market capitalizations in the tens or hundreds or billions of dollars, not even counting Gemalto, a company worth €3 billion that is suing Google as well as the three leading Android handset makers.)

BT filed its lawsuit on Thursday with the United States District Court for the District of Delaware:

11-12-15 BT v Google Complaint

BT seeks damages -- even triple damages for willful and deliberate infringement -- as well as an injunction. The complaint suggests that Google refused to pay. The second sentence of paragraph 21 states that "BT brings this action to recover the just compensation it is owed and to prevent Google from continuing to benefit from BT's ivnentions without authorization".

BT brings this action at a time when Google is trying to close its acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Whether BT already has a cross-license deal in place with MMI or simply doesn't believe MMI has any patents with which Google can effectively strike back, it's clear that BT decided to assert its rights at any rate.

I don't know yet whether BT also brought litigation in Europe over local equivalents of those patents. It would certainly make sense to take advantage of the swift and rather patent holder-friendly decisions taken by certain German courts in order to get Google to pay sooner rather than later.

With so many major patent holders asserting their rights, obligations to pay royalties may force Google to change its Android licensing model and pass royalties on to device makers.

Patents-in-suit and accused technologies

These are the six patents-in-suit and the related infringement allegations:

• U.S. Patent No. 6,151,309 on a "service provision system for communications networks"

  According to BT's complaint, "embodiments of the invention include providing services by means of a combination of communications networks in spite of differing capabilities on the bandwidth that is available in certain mobile networks", with Google Music and Android offering "representative examples of Google's infringement" of this patent. The complaint states that "Google Music maintains data relating to whether a particular music service is available or unavailable to its user based on whether is located in, and connected to, a WiFi hotspot or a cellular data network". It also says that certain file download and upload services related to Android are available based on whether a user has a WiFi or cellular connection. "For example, a Google Android user can choose his or her settings to allow downloading of a file in Browser and Android Market only whe the user is located in a WiFi hotspot and his or her device is connected to that hotspot."

• U.S. Patent No. 6,169,515 on a "navigation information system"

  This patent covers "a navigation system which includes a fixed part and at least one mobile part to provide guidance information to a user". Simply put, whatever information is available on the mobile device can be complemented or enhanced with "current information" (such as route and traffic information) that is transferred over a mobile connection.

  BT complains that "Google Maps determines the location of the user in relation to one or more discrete predetermined map overlay areas" and then "transmits guidance information pertaining to public transportation stops, tourist attractions and local facilities present in an overlay area to all users within that overlay area", and does the same for "traffic and route guidance".

• U.S. Patent No. 6,397,040 on a "telecommunications apparatus and method"

  According to the complaint, this patent covers the generation and transmission of "shortlists of sources of information dependent upon the location of a user", which lists "may relate to sources of information respecitng services, facilities, friends and transportation and may be generated in accordance with user preferences".

  That sounds broad, and accordingly, infringement allegations are brought against Google Maps, Google Search, Google Places, Google's location-based advertising, Google Offers, and the Google+ social network.

• U.S. Patent No. 6,578,079 on a "communications node for providing network based information service"

  According to BT, this patent covers "a network-based information service in a communications network by storing customer identities, respective customer-associated lists of identifies of information itemts for which the respective associated customer has access rights, and identifies of item-associated information sources which store the respective items". This is, essentially, a digital rights management patent.

  The accused technologies include the Android Market app store, Google Books and Google Music. For example, the complaint states that "Google's Android Market utilizes user identities in Google's servers, maintains a list of items (e.g., Android apps, movies and books) that each user can access, and, for each such item, provides the identity of the source of the item's contents". Following a login or the transmission of an authentication token, Google "offers the lsit of items that the user is entitled to access", and retrieves any such items at the user's request.

• U.S. Patent No. 6,650,284 on an "information system"

  This one is derived from the '515 ("navigation information system") patent described further above and adds the particular feature of "providing information to a mobile part in which the route may be affected by a physical characteristic of the vehicle with which the mobile part is associated".

  The complaint argues that Google Maps proposes different routes based on "the user's mode of transportation (e.g., bicycle or car)", which is correct.

• U.S. Patent No. 6,826,598 on a "storage and retrieval of location based information in a distributed network of data storage devices"

  BT claims that this patent "allows for rapid storage and retrieval of location-specific information stored across the distributed network where such information is accessible simultaneously from a pluarlity of remote user terminals". BT sees an infringement in Google Maps and Google Maps Navigation providing different levels of specificity at different zoom levels, making some information available at multiple zoom levels and other information only at a particular level. BT also complains that "the locality of interest for location-based information source is determined as a function of a mobile user's speed of travel" or "direction of travel".

Android already had more than enough intellectual problems anyway. Now Google faces one more large organization that believes its rights are infringed. BT probably wants to continue to be able to do business with all mobile device makers and therefore decided to sue Google itself.

Apple is suing HTC over a former BT patent

Android was previously hit by litigation over a BT patent, but the related complaint was brought by Apple five months ago. In its second ITC complaint against HTC, Apple is asserting a "portable computers" patent it acquired from BT in 2008.

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