14 DAY TRIAL // The chief executive officer (CEO) of Broadcom, a company that makes networking and communications ICs for data, voice, and video applications, has quite bluntly said that it's shameful how things are going right now.
We've covered so many patent litigation lawsuits, many of which are still going strong, that we are pretty much fed up with them.
Apparently, so are some of the big names in the IT industry, one of whom decided to briefly take the gloves off and tell things as they are.
During an interview with Mobile World Live, Scott McGregor admitted to significant misgivings about the patent spats and what they normally lead to. He was very detached throughout the whole thing, but that only gave more weight to his words.
“I believe it’s shameful that you can make more money suing people than on creating great products,” McGregor told Mobile World Live in an exclusive video interview.
“Hopefully our governments are paying attention to that because that’s not a good outcome for any of us. Intellectual property has value, Broadcom invests in that. We do it primarily to create great products and I hope most of us can get this settled and move back to focusing on creating great products going forward as our primary objective... Probably, things have gotten a little out of hand.”
We'd say that “a little” is a massive understatement, especially when other companies say patent disputes are “a pain,” only to sue Android device makers everywhere (among others).
That’s not to say that quarrels over tablets and phones are the only sort going on. There are plenty of others, like the famous HP-Oracle fight.
We don't need much foresight to know that situations like this will keep happening. We wouldn't mind IT companies sticking to legitimate claims though, or at least relevant ones. As it stands, it's pretty clear that patent lawsuits are being used as cheap means to make money and eliminat competition instead of just protecting the IP.
Would that executives just showed more inclination towards signing licensing deals and be done with it. Alas, all the drama resulting from the fights is perfect, free marketing.