Last week Google acquired Motorola in order to “protect” its Android ecosystem, as well as to contribute to its hardware future. Google has been the victim of more than a few lawsuits involving patent litigation, and while buying Motorola’s many assets can be a benefit for the company’s mobile business in a variety of ways, it mostly means it will have more intellectual property in its arsenal to fight its court battles.
Of course Motorola’s got some baggage Google will have to deal with (in the form of its own legal issues), those 17,000 pending patents are enough to make it a valuable commodity in Android’s eyes. And of those nearly thousands, there are 18 that actually stand to securely back Google’s mobile platform.
Patent lawyer David Mixon tells Bloomberg that this group, which dates back to 1994, was the backbone of Motorla’s lawsuits against Apple. He calls these the company’s “strongest patents,” which revolve around locations services, atenna designs, wireless email, touchscreen motions, software application management, multi-device synchronization, and 3G wireless services. Here are the 18 important properties Google can now lay claim to.
- US patent #5,311,516 – Paging systems using message fragmentation to redistribute traffic
- US patent #5,319,712 – Method and apparatus for providing cryptographic protection of a data stream
- US patent #5,490,230 – Digital speech coder having optimized signal energy parameters
- US patent #5,572,193 –Method for authentication and protection of subscribers in telecommunications systems”
- US patent #6,175,559 – Method for generating preamble sequences in a code division multiple access systems
- US patent #6,359,898 – Method for performing a countdown function during a mobile-originated transfer for a packet radio system
- US patent #5,359,317 – Method and apparatus for selectively storing a portion of a received message in a selective call receiver
- US patent #5,636,223 – Methods of adaptive channel access attempts
- US patent #6,246,697 – Method and system for generating a complex pseudonoise sequence for processing a code division multiple access signal
- US patent #6,246,862 – Sensor controlled user interface for portable communication device
- US patent #6,272,333 – Method and apparatus in a wireless communication system for controlling a delivery of data
- US patent #7,751,826 – System and method for E911 location privacy protection
- US patent #5,710,987 – Receiver having concealed external antenna
- US patent #5,754,119 – Multiple pager status synchronization system and method
- US patent #5,958,006 – Method and apparatus for communicating summarized data
- US patent #6,008,737 – Apparatus for controlling utilization of software added to a portable communication device
- US patent #6,101,531 – System for communicating user-selected criteria filter prepared at wireless client to communication server for filtering data transferred from host to said wireless client
- US patent #6,377,161 – Method and apparatus in a wireless messaging system for facilitating an exchange of address information
When Motorola took on Apple last year, it was battling the company’s “late entry into the telecommunications market” and ignored licensing fees. And four of the patents Motorola used to seek payment from Apple found the company past success when it sued RIM. The BlackBerry maker settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
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