Google's Android operating system has enabled companies such as HTC, Motorola and Samsung to come forth with devices that can compete with Apple's iPhone. And as noted at Digital Spy, Google's patent counsel Tim Porter warned in a recent San Francisco Chronicle interview that the subsequent rash of legal wrangles over patents serves only to threaten innovation across the mobile device industry, because "the concern is that the more people get distracted with litigation, the less they'll be inventing."
According to Porter, "You can look at the development of the software industry and see a point when [software wasn't being patented] and it was a period of intense innovation. You didn't see Microsoft's first software patent until 1988. By that time it had come out with Word, not to mention DOS. So there's just no question you can look back and see that innovation happens without patents. It's also true that since there weren't patents, there wasn't software patent litigation."
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