Who’s Suing Who? A Cheat Sheet to the Mobile Patent Mess
All the legal ugliness in the phone business--and a few peaceable relationships--all on one page.By Harry McCracken | Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 7:32 pm
So Apple is suing Samsung, accusing it of imitating Apple products with its Galaxy phones and tablets. The most startling thing about the news may be that the two companies weren’t already in court with each other. Over the past few years, the mobile industry has been so rife with suits and countersuits that if every complainant managed to sue every subject of its ire out of business…well, there’d hardly be a mobile industry left.
I had trouble remembering the precise details of the umpteen cases that have made headlines–as well as some related relationships, such as Microsoft’s licensing agreements with Amazon and HTC–so I decided to document them with a handy-dandy infographic, as much for my own edification as anyone else’s.
A few notes:
- This covers only patent-related suits, not ones solely over trademarks, employee poaching, and other issues.
- It only address mobile-related tussles (which is why LG’s attempt to prevent Sony from importing the PlayStation 3 into the US isn’t listed).
- It only involves great big companies, not smaller ones who are doing some of the suing.
- I’ve identified software and hardware companies that work together on devices (such as Microsoft and Samsung) but haven’t tried to indicate OEM and component relationships.
- I’ve also shown some licensing relationships I know about, but there are probably others.
- Any cases which I’ve forgotten about or didn’t know about in the first place aren’t here.
With that out of the way…
If you’ve got any corrections, additions, or thoughts about any of this, lemme know. I may update the graphic as future events warrant…although the mere thought of even more mobile legal spats cropping up is depressing me…
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49 Comments For This Post
April 19th, 2011 at 7:00 pm
Nice article.
LOL companies are fighting for technology.
May be its “3rs World War” know at “Technology War” ?
Btw, nice graphic.
April 19th, 2011 at 8:03 pm
What a free market we have these days. Companies are able to compete with eachother without fear of unjust lawsuits and patent actual innovations rather than minor recombination or rehashes of someone else's idea. We truly live in a great capitalist society.
April 19th, 2011 at 8:15 pm
Interesting to note who generally likes to play nice and who's a bully. Google, as we might expect, like to collaborate where possible and their only acrimonious relationships are with Apple and MIcrosoft whereas those companies are suing practically everyone. Nokia seem quite open and friendly too.
April 19th, 2011 at 8:16 pm
As do Motorola.
April 20th, 2011 at 1:40 am
I would say that you're taking a highly charitable view regarding Google's position. The alternative view would be that their partners (notice, only handset makers), are happy about getting a "free" operating system. That "free" operating system infringes a lot of Microsoft's and Apple's patents. Rather than sue Google directly, Microsoft and Apple are suing the handset makers first. After all, it's the handset makers that are actually selling Android devices, not Google, and it's a lot easier to seek specific per-unit monetary damages from companies profiting directly from infringement. A suit against Google would be more difficult to quantify.
April 20th, 2011 at 7:36 am
Alternatively, you are a troll.
“Good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” – Steve Jobs,
Of course, Microsoft suing isn't quite as bad as Microsoft's ex- CTO Nathan Myhrvold in his second coming as professional patent troll, but that's another story. American "innovation" at its best.
April 21st, 2011 at 6:47 am
That is the classic definition of a patent troll. A patent troll accumulates junk patents and then goes sueing to extort as much cash as possible CLAIMING that their "inventions" such as double clicking etc. are infringed. Like any self respecting extortionist, trolls of course target the weak who will capitulate and settle. If they challenged someone who is willing to fight back, then the likelihood is that they will lose. This is exactly what Microsoft is doing.
Microsoft used to be a software company once. They are now the classic patent troll.
April 19th, 2011 at 8:55 pm
With all its law suits,It surprises me that Microsoft is not suing itself.
Also worth noting: no company is shown collaborating with itself – can we read anything into this?
April 19th, 2011 at 9:28 pm
Apple seemed to be the biggest bully, as statistics proved.
February 8th, 2012 at 7:59 pm
that is funny. apple is going for it.
if you cant sell – hen suing is the way
April 19th, 2011 at 9:35 pm
If only the rule of parsimony rang true in journalism… only half of the chart is necessary. Split it along the diagonal.
April 19th, 2011 at 9:41 pm
I considered other formats, but decided I liked this best, and yes, I know each relationship is shown twice. Your mileage may well vary…
–Harry
April 20th, 2011 at 2:03 am
This chart is a good start, but it doesn't tell the whole story. There's lots of patents which are licensed throughout the industry without lawsuits. For example, Qualcomm basically invented CDMA (possibly infringing Broadcom's patents in the process). If you look at the chart, it kind of looks that Nokia is the only one playing nice with Qualcomm, when in fact everyone on this list licenses IP from Qualcomm. Likewise, Nokia has the most GSM-related patents, which they also license to everyone on the list.
So, while this may cover most of the lawsuits, it really under-represents how interconnected the industry really is.
April 20th, 2011 at 2:06 am
Yep–I just put in a few relationships that have come up in the context of the lawsuits, such as Microsoft's arrangement with HTC. There's a lot more that's not so well publicized.
–Harry
April 20th, 2011 at 5:56 am
Only Motorola has balls to sue microsoft?
April 20th, 2011 at 6:03 am
uh, where is google going after MS or apple? I think you should make it clear that it's only apple and MS suing google, not the other way around.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:29 am
Two corrections.
Seems Microsoft is suing Apple because Microsoft wants to uses the AppStore term and Apple is suing Amazon because Amazon is using the AppStore term.
April 20th, 2011 at 7:05 am
I'm gonna make this my new phone's wall paper. Brilliant.
April 20th, 2011 at 7:21 am
Now, lets make it so when you hover a mouse over one of the icons in the graphic you get a tool-tip like box with a summary of the lawsuit.
April 20th, 2011 at 7:26 am
Here's an older one that maybe has a few extra old ones: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/an-explo…
April 20th, 2011 at 8:21 am
So embarrassed for the editors of this post, not knowing when to use the word 'whom.'
April 20th, 2011 at 8:51 am
I know about whom, but cheerfully avoid it in instances where it would sound fussy–a policy that multiple professional copy editors of my acquaintance have been okay with.
–Harry
April 20th, 2011 at 9:04 am
Excellent and clever piece & design. I agree with Mike Cem and that Qualcomm should probably have full rows of smilies in both directions. It's ironic that the only one is with Nokia, which tried unsuccessfully, along with Broadcom, to break Q's biz model. Also, CDMA wasn't 'invented" by Qualcomm, "just" commercialized it. And there certainly wasn't any infringement on Broadcom by CDMA technology.
April 21st, 2011 at 12:43 am
When I said "basically invented", I kind of just meant that Qualcomm was the primary holder of CDMA-related patents, if not the exclusive holder. (Also, I wasn't aware the situation with Broadcom has already been resolved. I remembered hearing about the initial filing, and then never heard about it again.)
April 20th, 2011 at 9:59 am
Where is HP Palm???
April 20th, 2011 at 10:08 am
notice it is Microsoft and Google that have the most suits going???? both are not worth the paper they are written on….
April 21st, 2011 at 6:55 am
Yeah, Microsoft is suing and Google is being sued, and yes Microsoft's patents are junk and not worth the paper they are written on. The problem with patent law particularly with regard to software being what it is, junk patents can and still do win, which makes software patents the extortionist and racketeer's dream. With the US patent system, you can make a profitable business filing obvious and non-novel patents and then leach off other people's hard work by sueing and extorting money from them.
April 21st, 2011 at 10:20 am
Are you sure you have your glasses on!?
Google?
Really?
April 21st, 2011 at 1:55 am
C'mon Guys! Let's see if we can get rid of all those ugly blue squares!
🙂
April 21st, 2011 at 6:17 am
Don't forget Apple vs. Amazon about the App Store: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-21/apple-su…
April 21st, 2011 at 9:40 am
I like how every company is suing someone else and yet Qualcomm is just sitting there minding its own business.
Makes sense, because they sure have a lot of business to mind! They raked in almost 4 billion in revenue in this quarter alone, making for almost a billion in net income.
Nice! Those are astounding numbers for a company which I'm sure most casual phone users have never heard of.
April 22nd, 2011 at 1:07 am
A handy chart – I've compiled a collection of similar infographics http://vislives.com/2011/04/22/looking-at-the-mob…
April 22nd, 2011 at 5:51 am
Thanks Chris for the list! The Design Language News graphic is the easiest to look at by far and conveys the most information with the least effort on the part of the user. If the arcs were color coded by the type of lawsuit, that would be the perfect way to represent this information.
The Guardian's infographic is the most informative with it's info bubbles.
But I have to say that it takes too much effort to get anything out of Harry McCracken's attempt above and needs to be reworked in big ways. It's confusing, awkward and makes my head hurt and can't compete with the other graphic's means of conveying these relationships, especially in the effortless way that the Design Language News graphic does it. We should be updating that graphic instead of creating an inferior one just because one can't be "copying" it.
Apple sued Microsoft over copying it's Macintosh user interface a long time ago and Microsoft just found other ways of doing the same thing. The result was that Windows is awkward and inconsistent in so many ways as a result, e.g. double-click to open in one place, single-click to open in another. Same thing is happening here — by not directly copying and improving upon the Design News Language graphic the result is a significantly inferior way of representing complex relationships.
Oh well, I realize that we can't have everything and your effort is still appreciated, Harry!
Mark Hernandez
The information Workshop <<<<<< 🙂
August 22nd, 2011 at 10:28 pm
Sigh, broken link – try this one
April 25th, 2011 at 3:45 pm
The increasingly complex web that's developed from all of the mobile patent enforcement actions is truly mind-boggling. What's more, it all seems rather wasteful, when one considers the fact that the likely result of all these lawsuits will be settlements and cross-licensing deals. How anticlimactic. http://www.generalpatent.com/media/videos/general…
May 2nd, 2011 at 7:36 pm
The increasingly complex web that's developed from all of the mobile patent enforcement actions is truly mind-boggling. What's more, it all seems rather wasteful, when one considers the fact that the likely result of all these lawsuits will be settlements and cross-licensing deals. http://www.industryweek.com/articles/patent_enfor…
May 3rd, 2011 at 11:12 am
Seems to me that companies are pushing harder than before to compete with competitors without doing the actual work of inventing new things rather just building on the work of others I think as this trend continues so will the cases of patent infringement and patent enforcement increase.
July 6th, 2011 at 12:19 pm
Thanks for sharing! I'm surprised with this lawsuit. However, anyone will sue each other now… Even if it's just to stop something from going public for a week. Orlando Audio Visual
August 12th, 2011 at 3:17 am
It's a great chart however I miss some ongoing lawsuits such as Ericsson vs. ZTE, see http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/a49e2a1a-5c85-11e0…. I would welcome an updated version.
October 7th, 2011 at 4:41 am
I guess many "windows" patents approved for Microsoft should actually belong to Apple. In the end of day, entire software patent system should not exist at all. Making software code is rather simple and anyone having basic programming skills is able to "invent" the same things. There is more patent non sense and fighting between companies than anything which could really be regarded as an "invention".
October 31st, 2011 at 4:01 am
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November 14th, 2011 at 11:57 pm
ASSE
Interesting article i admit. i am a rusty reader to your site *^* i will before long replace my home page with your web site.
December 5th, 2011 at 11:25 am
The apple company is suing New samsung over the parallels of the latter's Whole world cellular phones and pills to the iPhone and iPad influenced me to try to papers all the the courtroom situations including cellular patents (as well as some relevant interactions such as certification agreements) in one infographic. I wonder what kind of engineering magic the organizations included could come up with if they took all the income they're providing to attorneys and used it on R&D instead. online coupons codes
December 12th, 2011 at 8:06 pm
Looking at the graphic, it seems Apple is highly protective of its technology while Google is being very friendly to other companies. I know that come of the companies on the list are suing each other because of the camera technologies but I am not sure which ones are involved.
January 12th, 2012 at 8:33 am
like one hugh technology war, why on earth are these huge corporations fighting over this. What good will it do nay of them.
January 14th, 2012 at 5:06 am
Why doesn't thi story surprise me. The whole bunch of these corporations are lying and cheating their customers let alone each othermillion dollar pips
January 17th, 2012 at 9:38 pm
Good job! Very informative post. I really love the rivalry of each Brand phones, because us consumers benefits from it! Best Mid-Range Digital SLR Cameras
January 26th, 2012 at 11:41 am
I don`t believe that Samsung did something wrong…
February 8th, 2012 at 6:49 pm
hahaha… nice.. i like the image showing who is suing who…
made me laugh…
thank you.. Alem