Did Google buying MMI actually make the patent mess worse?
When Google announced their plan to buy Motorola Mobility (MMI) last year the deal was widely praised by mobile industry analysts who predicted Motorola's phone patents would give Google the leverage needed to force Apple into a cross licensing agreement. Nearly ten months later, Google has finally cleared all the regulatory hurdles and the buyout is complete, but if anything it seems that the licensing disputes have multiplied and Google seems willing to fight dirtier than their opponents just to prolong the fight..
To appreciate the implications of where we are now you first need to understand how we got here. In fact you can trace the current web of lawsuits and patent claims all the way back to the 1990s when the US appeals court which holds the final authority over all patent cases (short of the Supreme Court) began broadening their interpretation of patent laws, suddenly rejecting a long established test and claiming that the standard it represented had never, in fact, existed at all. At the time it was perhaps reasonable to consider whether a bit of code could, in fact, be novel and original enough to be patented. At the same time they could have explored whether it is possible to narrow down a patent definition to a point where it protects only the novel and inobvious bits.
