Mobile Space A Firestorm Of Lawsuits

Lately it seems you cannot be a serious contender in the mobile phone space without either suing someone, being sued, or both. There are an amazing number of lawsuits going on back and forth between mobile companies. One wonders what kind of advances could be made in the technology if all of the resources being spent on legal fees were poured back into the devices.We know that Microsoft has recently filed a federal suit against Motorola for what Microsoft perceives and patent infringements in Motorola's implementation of Android. Oracle is suing Google over its use of Java in Android. Those are just the tip of the iceberg though.

The Guardian has a graphic showing the mobile companies current engaged in one lawsuit or another with another company in the mobile device space. There are 17 companies listed and there are at least 22 suits going back and forth between companies.

Nokia is the most prolific, filing suits against Hitachi, Sharp, Toshiba, Qualcomm, Apple and Samsung. Qualcomm and Apple are having none of it though and have filed suits against Nokia.

Kodak is the second worst of the bunch issuing suits against five other companies. I am sure those are all about camera technology and Kodak, once the photography king, is trying to stay relevant in an industry that has passed it by.

The legal bills for all of these suits must be running into the millions, even tens of millions. That is a lot of money that could be poured back into internal processes to spur innovation. Companies do, however, have the right and even duty to protect their intellectual property. Anyone who argues that there is no such thing isn't living in reality. What is unfortunate though is some of the patents the companies have are tenuous at best, where they have patented a process that is just common sense, similar to Amazon's 1-click patent, a patent that has been very controversial since it was granted in 1999. The patent system needs a serious overhaul when it comes to granting patents for software. Clearly some processes deserve it, but at least as many, if not more, are just land grabs.

It seems the only company that is missing out on all the fun is Palm, now a part of Hewlett Packard. Given the relative success of Palm versus the 17 companies listed, maybe Palm should file a lawsuit, or at the very least go violate someone's patent.