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September 21, 2012

Skyhook Wireless Launches Wi-Fi Willful Patent Infringement Suit Against 'Evil' Google

One of the most famous things about Google is that it refers to itself as the pre-eminent anti-evil business organization. Its long standing “do no evil” policy (disclosure: we confess we have no idea if any such policy actually exists within the Googledrome any longer – we doubt it) was quaint when it was first announced to an adoring public waiting to scoop up post-IPO shares at $82 a share. Some of us (both mistakenly and stupidly) thought $82 was too high a price at the time, especially for a company that was going to ensure it did no evil!

We do not actually know anyone who believes Google doesn’t do evil things, and of course the word “evil” itself is extraordinarily malleable, and becomes even more so as a company grows into a growing number of 800 pound gorillas. When companies reach this stage they become impervious to their growing evilness – and no matter how many food courts they operate for their employees, or how many different green projects they get up and running in their labs, and no matter how much the two boys at the top pay in carbon exchange fees when they use their jets (at least according to a Wall Street Journal article: “A Google spokeswoman confirmed that…Messrs. Page and Brin have mitigated the greenhouse gas emissions from their aircraft usage by purchasing an even greater amount of carbon offsets…”), evil grows, it doesn’t shrink.


Image via Shutterstock

There is a reason for this discussion of Google evilness. Stay with us.

Skyhook Wireless is Hooked Then Yanked

Skyhook Wireless is a company we’ve covered since it emerged from stealth mode almost but not quite a decade ago, and its co-founder and CEO, Ted Morgan, has long been a Wi-Fi guru and evangelist. Through its Wi-Fi Position Service (WPS) it is a pioneer in the use of Wi-Fi, especially as it applies to location-based capabilities and services.

More recently, the company has expanded its WPS-services in numerous ways that includes being able to provide all sorts of interesting data on users that in turn can be used for marketing and ad-based purposes. It is worth noting that the iPhone used Skyhook’s WPS from 2008 – April 2010, when Apple moved to its own internally built technology. All well and good until...

Back in April 2010 Skyhook got involved with Motorola - happily at first. Motorola decided to ditch Google’s services in favor of using Skyhook Wireless’ technology. This was big news for Skyhook at the time as it was both a high profile customer win as well as a high profile revenue generating opportunity. But Google did not take well to the announcement and, to make a long story short, pressured Motorola – allegedly through “threats” or subtle messages related to Motorola’s ability to use Android – to reverse its decision and to then drop Skyhook and return to using Google’s services. A great internal e-mails thread between Motorola, Skyhook and Google on the whole thing is available.

Motorola ended up dropping Skyhook, and then Skyhook launched a federal patent infringement lawsuit and a state (MA) business interference lawsuit against Google – a classic David and Goliath event. In typical Goliath fashion Google asked the federal court to simply dismiss the case as having no merit, but instead the court ruled that the lawsuit would move forward. An extensive review of the entire case is available and worth reading from The Verge.

Willful Infringement

Now, Skyhook has upped the ante several notches, and filed a new patent lawsuit against Google a week ago, alleging infringement of nine geolocation-related patents by Android and Google Maps. The new complaint was filed in the District of Delaware and raises the stakes significantly for all concerned. Interestingly, eight of the nine patents involved in the new lawsuit were issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office after the earlier lawsuit was filed in the District of Massachusetts.

Like in its earlier patent lawsuit, Skyhook alleges willful infringement, pointing to business negotiations between Google and Skyhook in 2006 and 2007.

Google Maps and Android are both at the heart of what drives both Google and Skyhook here. Google not only provides Google Maps as a core Android service, but also gains a great deal of consumer insights from its Wi-Fi gathering efforts. Google also controls the version of Android that contains Google services. If any company wants to use and incorporate Skyhook’s technology into the version of Android it will place on any given, then Google’s version of Android with all of Google’s services (in addition to and beyond mapping services) becomes off limits. This is the reason Motorola went back to Google.

Overall, there are some complex issues at stake. Google, from a certain perspective, strikes us as simply putting a great deal of “muscle” to work to lock Skyhook out. More specifically, it is locking Skyhook out even though Skyhook’s technology may be preferable to the vendors Skyhook is looking to sell to. Muscle…evil – is there a difference? Meanwhile, we suspect there is a good deal of truth to Skyhook’s belief that Google is willfully infringing – muscle (or evil) can go a long way in altering how a large company behaves, but tiny Skyhook is hanging tough.

We’ve seen Microsoft act as Google is acting – it went through a willful infringement stage some time ago, and had its ears pinned back a few times. Given Google’s current muscle/evil troubles in Europe, we wonder if Google needs to take a step back and rethink how it behaves. Skyhook may help it to figure this out.

Want to learn more about today’s powerful mobile Internet ecosystem? Don't miss the Mobility Tech Conference & Expo, collocated with ITEXPO West 2012 taking place Oct. 2-5 2012, in Austin, TX.  Stay in touch with everything happening at Mobility Tech Conference & Expo. Follow us on Twitter.




Edited by Brooke Neuman


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