Apple and Other Rockstar Consortium Shareholders Not Involved in Google Lawsuit Decision
Late last month, the Rockstar Consortium -- a group of companies, including Apple, Ericsson, Microsoft, BlackBerry, and Sony, that purchased a collection of 6,000 patents and patent applications from the bankrupt Nortel in 2011 -- sued Google, Samsung, HTC, Huawei and others for infringement of some of those patents.
In an interview with Intellectual Asset Management (via TUAW), Rockstar CEO John Veschi, who was Nortel's chief intellectual property officer before the company went bust, said "It was entirely my call based on the facts in front of me." Shareholders, including Apple, "got an email telling them what had happened after the suits were issued.”
What is important to remember about Rockstar is that it is essentially the continuation of what was previously the Nortel licensing operation – or the one that Veschi would have established if he had been able to see through his plans for the Canadian telecoms company before it entered bankruptcy. Veschi joined Nortel as its chief IP officer in 2008 and by 2009 had already established programmes for both its internet patent portfolio and the one relating to handsets. As a result, he and his team have actually been negotiating with parties for four or five years, not just the two since Rockstar came into being. “The real question is why it took us so long to initiate actions. We didn’t and we didn’t, but there comes a time when you have to. There is nothing magic about it,” Veschi says.
There was some pushback against Apple, after the initial lawsuit filing, from customers and pundits who believed Apple was behind the filing of the lawsuit. This interview would seem to be a response from the Rockstar Consortium, which apparently operates independently of its shareholders, that the decision was entirely up to the holding company's executive team.
Rockstar is likely seeking significant damages from Google and the other defendants, claiming that their patent infringement is ongoing and willful.
Popular Stories
Apple will adopt the same rear chassis manufacturing process for the iPhone SE 4 that it is using for the upcoming standard iPhone 16, claims a new rumor coming out of China. According to the Weibo-based leaker "Fixed Focus Digital," the backplate manufacturing process for the iPhone SE 4 is "exactly the same" as the standard model in Apple's upcoming iPhone 16 lineup, which is expected to...
Key details about the overall specifications of the iPhone 17 lineup have been shared by the leaker known as "Ice Universe," clarifying several important aspects of next year's devices. Reports in recent months have converged in agreement that Apple will discontinue the "Plus" iPhone model in 2025 while introducing an all-new iPhone 17 "Slim" model as an even more high-end option sitting...
Apple typically releases its new iPhone series around mid-September, which means we are about two months out from the launch of the iPhone 16. Like the iPhone 15 series, this year's lineup is expected to stick with four models – iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max – although there are plenty of design differences and new features to take into account. To bring ...
Apple is scaling back its Hollywood spending after investing over $20 billion in original programming with limited success, Bloomberg reports. This shift comes after the streaming service, which launched in 2019, struggled to capture a significant share of the market, accounting for only 0.2% of TV viewership in the U.S., compared to Netflix's 8%. Despite heavy investment, critical acclaim,...
Last Friday, a major CrowdStrike outage impacted PCs running Microsoft Windows, causing worldwide issues affecting airlines, retailers, banks, hospitals, rail networks, and more. Computers were stuck in continuous recovery loops, rendering them unusable. The failure was caused by an update to the CrowdStrike Falcon antivirus software that auto-installed on Windows 10 PCs, but Mac and Linux...
