The patent wars are a hot mess. Maybe this infographic can help you sort things out...
The patent wars have gotten uglier and more numerous as time rolls on. It’s now nearly impossible to keep track of who is accusing who of infringing on what anymore.
It all makes a little more sense in diagram form. Visual.ly has done the service of compiling some of the numbers involved in the patent wars and has released an infographic on the skirmishes that each of the companies are involved in. You can see that Apple, ZTE, Huawei, Kodak, and Microsoft are all bearing the brunt of the worst of it.
Samsung and Apple have recently been in talks to settle their differences. Google and Oracle just settled their patent lawsuit yesterday. Maybe in time we can start seeing this diagram clear up a little?
So now whatever helpful service it would have went to instead got burned so corporations can
sue each other for billions of dollars in what resembles a circle jerk. But that is way more important than your kids getting new updated textbooks this year, right?
@amk-aka-phantom, Tom's image is full size, but you do need to click on it a couple of times to get there.
This is idiotic... click 3 times to open a single image? Dumb advertisement driven design...
While this is arguably true, they are also very obviously the worst culprits behind it all, along with Interdigital. Indeed, looking at this graph, the only companies with more that three outgoing lawsuits are Apple, Interdigital, Kodak and Microsoft.
Samsung and Google, being as freaking huge as they are, are suing only one company, and in Samsung's case, is Apple, which is an "eye for an eye" situation.
I feel Barnes & Noble is just there to be trolled by Microsoft.
Motorola Mobility: 17000 patents. That must have been fun for everyone.
The cost of running the courts is actually the least important issue of the patent system. I bet companies spend way more on their legal departments than governments spend on courts.
The real issue is, that the current patent system hampers competition more than it encourages innovation.
Actually it's 2 times. It's worse than 1, agreed, but it's better than 3!
Pay attention. The gray part of the chart is the "who is selling to who" section. So yes they do own them.
Pay attention. The gray part of the chart is the "who is selling to who" section. So yes they do own them.
I just said they had the most lines? As in, they're the most active in the patent world?
But...
Pay attention. Apple does not in fact sell any patents (according to this chart). They are however suing for 40 of them... (five lines yes, but look at the little bubbles with numbers in them.)