Google sues to protect Android device makers from Apple

Google has filed a new lawsuit to challenge an Apple-backed consortium known as Rockstar that is using dubious patents to threaten its partners and customers in the mobile device industry.

In a complaint filed Monday in San Jose, Google claims that Rockstar's patent campaign is taking aim at hundreds of California tech companies and that the litigation has "placed a cloud on Google's Android platform," threatening Nexus devices in particular.

The lawsuit amounts to an effort to shield ASUS and other companies that use the open source Android operating system from a legal extermination effort by Rockstar, which filed a wave of lawsuits in late October:

Despite its cocky name, Rockstar is simply a corporate patent troll hatched by Google rivals - including Apple, Microsoft and BlackBerry - after the rivals spent $4.5 billion ($2.5 billion from Apple) in 2012 for a trove of patents from Nortel, a long defunct Canadian telco company. Today, Rockstar employs once-proud Canadian engineers to work as high-tech ring-wraiths in service of its American trolling operation. The filing says:

Rockstar produces no products and practices no patents. Instead, Rockstar employs a staff of engineers in Ontario, Canada, who examine other companies' successful products to find anything that Rockstar might use to demand and extract licenses to its patents under threat of litigation.

The complaint also states that Rockstar's trolling campaign has involved shakedown requests directed at more than 100 companies, and that Rockstar's CEO has said that Facebook, LinkedIn and every other tech company is infringing the old Nortel patents.

Such claims may seem absurd, and speed calls to reform a dysfunctional patent system, but they also present a very real business problem for Android makers since the lawsuits mean an ongoing risk of injunctions and unpredictable jury verdicts.

Google appears to be especially concerned about the Nexus line of phones. It asks the court to declare that "the Nexus 5, Nexus 7, or Nexus 10 devices sold by Google directly or indirectly" don't infringe seven patents that belong to Rockstar or to "MobileStar, " another shell company that "was formed for litigation one day before Rockstar filed its lawsuits against Google's customers."

As for the patents, they relate to basic functions like "mobile hotspot functionality," "VPN management functionality" and "Messaging and Notification."

It's unclear, however, how far Google will get with its attempt to get a declaration that the patents don't infringe.

In April, America's patent appeals court ruled Cisco couldn't sue to protect its customers from patent infringements suits targeting customers that used its routers. This could create procedural obstacles in Google's attempt to put brakes on the sprawling Android litigation.

Meanwhile, Rockstar has also expanded its troll campaign with new lawsuits against Cisco and the cable industry earlier this month. Such tactics may suggest that the troll company may be getting anxious about how to recoup the $4.5 billion its owners spent to create it.

This week, Bloomberg cited Rockstar who said the troll has had "little success in landing large licensing deals," and that some of its patents are now up for sale - suggesting that companies are resisting Rockstar's demands for protection money.

More broadly, a modicum of sanity may return to the patent system next year as the Supreme Court has announced it will review whether software patents should be eligible in the first place, and as Congress pushes forward with a law to rein in patent trolls.

Here's Google's complaint with some of the relevant bits underlined:

Google Dec Action vs Rockstar Related research

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