Rockstar, a consortium formed to negotiate licensing
for patents acquired from bankrupt Nortel Networks, is consisted of six
industry giants: Apple, Inc., BlackBerry, Ericsson, Microsoft, and Sony.
To understand why Rockstar has been numerously
accused for being a patent troll, we need to first of all understand its
nature. It’s a patent licensing company that owns more than 4,000 patents,
which are developed by Nortel. The business model is claimed to be patent
licensing and patent sales.
Something very interesting about Rockstar is when
you go to its website, there is a tab called “Innovation”. However, instead of
talking about how the firm can bring new technologies and innovations to the
society, it talks about “protect when necessary” and “when patent infringement
occurs”. So what Rockstar essentially does is to help its six members defend
their patents against infringement. Its business roots in multi-million and
sometimes multi-billion dollar settlements, and of course, forced licensing
agreements.
With a group of smart engineers - many of whom are
patent holders themselves - Rockstar however does not focus on research and
development. Its engineers are too busy reverse engineering on its six owners’
competitors’ products, and suing them for damages.
Rockstar filed lawsuits against Google, Samsung, HTC
and other Android manufacturers, and most likely file more in the future. This
Nortel patent portfolio is truly a nuclear stockpile; it can be very dangerous
in the wrong hands. If Google owns it, it would further strengthen Google’s
portfolio and gives it more monopoly rights over the market. Nonetheless, the
technology giant Google failed to win Nortel over with its highest bid $4.4
billion against Rockstar’s $4.5 billion bid. Some people were relieved when
Google didn’t take over Nortel, but now it seems that Nortel is still in the
wrong hands after all. Innovations are discouraged and customers are ultimately
negatively affected.
As an engineer, I think it would suck to have my job be reverse engineering other people's products. This is something I would rather do in my spare time... Either way, I wish there was a way to put an end to patent trolls. They take advantage of the patent system in a way that it was never intended to be used. Patents are supposed to foster innovation and creativity, not suppress it.
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