Google's director of Android global partnerships, John Lagerling, addressed the issue of patent lawsuits against Google's partners while speaking at a Pacific Crest investor conference. At a time when everyone under the sun is suing everyone else, I assume Mr. Lagerling felt the need to explain to investors that Google does have a strategy to assist and protect Android from legal issues, though he didn't give much detail. His take on the subject:
Without going into too much detail, I do think that we have very strong paths that we can take to protect the values of Android that we have built through the open-source Apache 2 license with our partners. Obviously, Google doesn’t build — we don’t build phones and devices, but we had a vested interest in protecting the values of the Android ecosystem.
So when our partners are being attacked by aggressors, which we see as materially unfounded, it’s something that we join up together with our partners to resolve. And we have, I think, several options that we can take that will help protect the values of Android.
So again, we want to protect innovation. Patents were supposed to be there to enable innovation and monetization of innovation. When it’s being used in a prospective which is more to, as we see it, stifle innovation, it’s not something that is good for consumers.
Android is the only operating system, modern smart-phone operating system, that exists on devices that cost $200 or less. That is what is enabling the next billion of users of the Internet on mobile in the world. There might be players that are not so excited to see the margins and the prices go down like that and the variety that Android enables, but I think we are very convinced that we will be able to continue and create and protect the value of Android.
This echoes what Eric Schmidt and Larry Page have said, while saying just as little. It stands to reason that Google has a strategy to protect the interests of their partners, and we can only assume that we'll see it when the time is right. Or on Twitter.
Source: ZDNet
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