Tech giants Google and Microsoft yesterday agreed to end their year-long patent battle that resulted in about 20 lawsuits in US and Germany alone. They said they have agreed to collaborate on patent.
Bloomberg reported that both companies have been litigating over technology innovations for five years. Google’s former Motorola Mobility unit had been demanding royalties on the Xbox video-gaming system, and Microsoft had sought to block Motorola mobile phones from using certain features.
The companies pledged in a statement to work together in other ways related to intellectual property, including development of a royalty-free, video-compression technology to speed downloads, in an initiative that also involves Amazon.com Inc. and Netflix Inc. They will also lobby for specific rules on a unified patent system throughout Europe.
The agreement marks a new amity between Microsoft and one of its top erstwhile enemies, and reflects a different tone set by Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella. On Aug. 10, when Sundar Pichai was named CEO of Google, Nadella tweeted congratulations to him, calling the promotion “well deserved.”
“This opens up the door for partnerships between Google and Microsoft, as Nadella is changing the image of the company into a lover and not a hater of other technology stalwarts,” said Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets.
Also speaking on the development, Aleksi Aaltonen, of Warwick Business School, an Assistant Professor of Information Systems and founder of tracking app Moves that was sold to Facebook, said: “Patent battles are business as usual for tech giants that use them for various purposes. Lawsuits are used to claim financial damages but undoubtedly are also used for strategic manoeuvring and even for PR.”
He told Innovaion Village: “Given that software patents are often notoriously ambiguous, lawsuits tend to become drawn out affairs that can last years. It can be very difficult to settle who infringed whose patents. However, in a fast-moving industry both sides may find that a lawsuit and the often retaliatory counter-lawsuit no longer serves a meaningful purpose and decide to stop wasting resources on the battle.”
