Big Time Anti-Troll Litigation: Google Sues Company Funded By Apple, Microsoft

Google has filed a complaint claiming that an Apple-backed company, Rockstar Consortium, has “placed a cloud” on its Android platform by filing a wave of patent lawsuits against more than 100 companies. The lawsuits claim Google devices, the Nexus line in particular, infringe on patents from Nortel, a Canadian telecommunications company. Apple, Microsoft, and Blackberry spent more than $4.5 billion to create Rockstar, which is an unabashed patent troll, according to Jeff John Roberts writing in the business and technology site Gigaom – a view clearly manifest in the Google complaint, as well, although the term does not appear.  “Rockstar produces no products and practices no patents,” the complaint says. “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.”