Intellectual Ventures Sues Motorola for Patent Infringement Again - One Patent Is For Linking URLs in an Email ~pj Updated 3Xs

Oh, joy, another stupid, bullying patent troll lawsuit trying to crush Android. There simply aren't enough of those already.

This one is brought by Intellectual Ventures against Motorola in Florida. Here's the complaint [PDF]. They are already suing Motorola in Delaware. Why not just add them to the Delaware case, if it needs shoring up? Maybe because this way, they get two tries at the golden ring on this merry-go-round, and if Google tries to consolidate the cases, they have to pay lawyers for that extra work, and if the effort fails, they have to pay two teams of lawyers to go to two different states to protect Motorola. Lawyers do know how to be annoying if they want to be. If the goal is to sue someone, like Google, let's just say, until they scream Uncle and pay up, they might just do so. Not that Google ever does. It has a fabulous record of success in patent defense, and they have done it repeatedly even without counterclaims, so in that sense, part of the benefit expected from using a troll to go after Google is probably lost.

And you will not believe the seven patents that are being used this time. One is for linking urls in an email. Yes. Really. Ever do that? Did you know you should be paying IV because the USPTO gave it ownership of that functionality? Actually it's less direct and IV keeps it a little bit murky, but I'll show you the details.

I want the USPTO to explain how this is even possible, that a patent could ever have issued on something like that.

And guess where IV got these patents? Not *directly* from the USPTO. I'll give you a big hint. Some of them, from what I'm seeing, are from working companies. Don't they call that privateering, when active companies outsource their patents to trolls to do their dirty work? Why yes. Yes, they do.

Can you guess one company in this picture? Someone helping Microsoft in its anticompetitive attack on Android and Linux, you say? Yes, one of the companies that seems to have transferred two patents to IV for its holy quest is Nokia, Microsoft's 'partner in crime', as I like to think of them.

I know. You are shocked, shocked to know that patents are being used anticompetitively in a court of law.