Friday, March 29, 2013

#18: Skyhook vs. Google


“Skyhook Wireless sued Google in 2010 for patent infringement and anticompetitive contact after the company controlling Android bullied Samsung and then independent Motorola out of partnerships with Skyhook concerning its location-positioning software.”

Google was able to postpone the trial by consolidating the lawsuit over nine more patents filed in September with this one. Because of all of the work that has to be done now the trial will not take place until next year in 2014 but when it does finally take place it will be a bigger deal.  

The consolidation of the two Skyhook v. Google cases was ordered over two weeks ago. Basically another trial date will have to be established. Skyhook’s lawyers knew that this could possibly happen. The only way they could have avoided that was to further postpone the second case that was to take place in September. Skyhook decided to schedule the second case at that time because two of the four patents-in-suits were tossed and they wanted to assert themselves as much as possible despite the risk of a delay.

This is a prime example of how patent cases are taking an unbelievably large amount of time to be handled in court. This suit was filed in 2010 and will not go to trial until 2014. The industry changes too quickly for this sort of legal debacle to occur. Google can delay the trial for now but will eventually have to deal with the infringement violations. Unfortunately for Skyhook this process is far too lengthy. 

5 comments:

  1. I agree, Patent law-suits so as any other kind of lawsuits can be very time-consuming. Besides the fact that they require a lot of investment.

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  2. Great article and thanks for the read! I wrote about the same issue this week and definitely agree with you and how patent cases take way too long. You'd expect if a company files a suit in 2010, it would be done within two years or so. I think that it is a prime reason why there are so many lawsuits these days over patents. Hopefully, Skyhook vs. Google will be delayed once more.

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  3. I feel the time it took to consolidate both cases could have been used to resolve them. I think this is just people stalling.

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  4. The court system isn't a place for speed and efficiency. I think the government should have special tax for all these lawsuits. It will help the court system to effectively process the lawsuits.

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    1. I think that is a very interesting idea. This would definitely reduce the number of lawsuits.

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