The Japanese company Fujifilm has added its name to the long list of companies that has filed a lawsuit against Google or one of its subsidiaries. In this case, Fujifilm asserts that Motorola Mobility has infringed on four of its patents. Till now, Fujifilm has played a rather defensive role when it comes to litigation. However, since April 2011, it has been unable to work out a license deal with Google, and has now filed a lawsuit against it, becoming the 8th company with a multi-billion dollar market capitalization to do so.
Fuijfilm’s asserted patents have only been described in broad terms however. It is likely that Motorola Mobility has been forced to take its chances, since the wording in these patents are ambiguous. Fujifilm has tried to assert that it has monopolized the concept of telephones that can connect with other devices. Yes, we’re talking about Wi-Fi. During the course of the litigation, such claims will have to be narrowed down if they are to expect any fruitful outcome from these lawsuits. Summary judgment and claim construction will play a huge part in this case.
Let’s look at the bigger picture. Android is facing lawsuits against some of the largest publicly traded companies. Consider Apple on the other hand. The only major companies (apart from Android’s pre-emptive strike) to file lawsuits against the company are Nokia and Eastman Kodak. Both suits were settled out of court. Seven major companies have brought patent infringement claims against Google. eBay has launched a suit for assertion of trade secrets. Excluding eBay (with a market cap of around 51.5 billion dollars), the aggregate of the market caps of the other seven companies comes to a whopping 1.06 trillion dollars! The companies in question are Oracle, Apple, Microsoft, British Telecom, Nokia, Fujifilm and Gemalto. Google’s own market cap is only 188 billion dollars, a third of Apple’s market cap! Sure, many people presume there’s some big conspiracy at hand to take down Google. But the fact is, the companies in question are too diverse for this.
So, does Apple manage to stay away from infringement claims better than Google does? Or is it better at signing non-aggression pacts and other licenses with other companies? It’s hard to say, since Apple has a tendency to be pretty tight lipped when it comes to business dealings with other companies. Google may be great at defending lawsuits, but fending off all these assertions at a time is hard. Whether this will affect the 50 percent smartphone market share that Android possesses, is the big question.
