Google addresses Microsoft’s ‘patent attack’ response, says it didn’t fall for its offer

Apple should still be staying out of the fray, however it seems like we’ve a whole-on backward and forward between Google and Microsoft, following the former’s blog post yesterday that alleged a “hostile, organized campaign” against Android at the component of Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and others. The most recent word comes again from Google’s SVP and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond, who has updated his original post with a response to what he calls Microsoft’s “false gotcha.” As you’ll recall from late yesterday, Microsoft mentioned the undeniable fact that it had offered Google the chance to bid jointly with it at the Novell patents, and that Google turned it down. In keeping with Drummond, however, this type of joint acquisition would have “eliminated any protection these patents could offer to Android against attacks from Microsoft and its bidding partners,” and that it “didn’t fall for it.” He further goes directly to note that the Justice Department’s eventual intervention inside the acquisition — which required the winning group to supply a license to the open source community — only backed up Google’s case, and reaffirmed its original point that its “competitors are waging a patent war on Android and dealing together to maintain us from getting patents that might help balance the scales.” Still no response from Microsoft on that, but we’d recommend staying tuned.

Source

This post is tagged: David Drummond, justice department, microsoft apple, open source community, original point