Lately, it seems as if Apple has been the only company in the spotlight lately in regards to potential "patent trolling"; however, today Microsoft has jumped back into the fray to remind us that they are in on the action too. On Monday, Microsoft filed suit against Motorola Mobility in front of United States International Trade Commission in order to block the sale of several phones, including the Droid 2, Droid X, Cliq XT, Devour and Backflip smartphones. One of Microsoft’s vice presidents, David Howard, told Bloomberg “Motorola is infringing on our patents and we are confident that the ITC will rule in our favor.” The ITC is investigating and will likely not wrap things up until March 5th of next year.
Here's a quote from the BGR article with Motorola's response to the lawsuit,
This really seems like a "jerk-move" on Microsoft's part. Some people may debate whether Apple is stretching the bounds of ethics with all of their "IP Wars", but it seems pretty obvious here that Microsoft is just trying to pour legal pressure on to Android, rather than actually trying to protect its interests. For one, Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 is basically turning out to be a flop which means they have no real argument as an innovator the way Apple does. Also, if Motorola were really infringing on Microsoft's patents, then why didn't they bring this lawsuit sooner? These phones are from last year!A Motorola Mobility spokeswoman told Bloomberg that the company is “vigorously defending … against Microsoft’s patent attack business strategy,” and that the company has also “brought legal actions of our own in the U.S. and in Europe to address Microsoft’s large scale of infringement of Motorola Mobility’s patents.”
I know it tends to be easy to bash on Microsoft, and we shouldn't jump to conclusions because of that, but isn't this just lame?
Source: Android.net via BGR