Google has been getting some buzz for the announcement of the Nexus 7 tablet device, built by Asus. At the Google I/O developer conference, they gave out the device to all attendees. As a press attendee I received a loaner version which I have to return, but in playing around with it for a few days, it seems like a well-designed device and I'm thinking of buying one when they're officially available. But, of course, as with pretty much anything cool or useful these days, some sore loser has to whine about how it's infringing on their patents. This time, it's Nokia bitching about how neither Asus nor Google have licensed its patent portfolio.

Here's the thing: if Nokia invented a device like this, then sell the damn device. If it's better than the Nexus 7 then it will sell better than the Nexus 7. Whining about patent infringement when you can't compete just makes you look like a sore loser. If what Nokia "invented" and patented was so important, bring the product to market and let the market decide. Bitching about how someone made a better product than you and demanding that they pay you money is just pure sour grapes. It may be legal, based on the idiocy of today's patent system, but it sure makes it clear to me why I'd never buy another Nokia product.

Back when I moved to Silicon Valley, Silicon Graphics Inc., (SGI) was still a hot place to work. They were still pumping out cool machines and had a reputation for a fun corporate culture. Of course, that collapsed pretty quickly over the next few years, as SGI totally misjudged the market trends and fell victim to the innovator's dilemma. Basically, SGI never could come to terms with the fact that its premium products were going to be increasingly undercut as cheaper commodity technology improved. Back in 2006, we noted that what remained of SGI had indicated that it planned to resurrect the company by going patent troll. However, we thought we'd avoided that ignoble result when SGI sold most of its assets to Rackable for a mere $25 million three years ago. Silly us for assuming those patents would just go away.

While Rackable changed its name to Silicon Graphics International... the original company actually retained the patents, and renamed itself Graphics Properties Holdings... and over the last few years has been suing lots of companies for patent infringement. In the last year alone it has sued Apple, HTC, LG, RIM, Samsung, Sony, Acer, ASUS, Panasonic, Sharp, Toshiba, Vizio and Motorola Mobility.

As the link above notes, while some of GPH's patents are relatively early, it appears that lots of similar inventions predated key patents. However, the early date may make those patents look stronger, and give GPH much more leverage in getting companies to pay up -- or risk losing the ability to produce devices with nice graphics capabilities.

Another day, another story of a company no one's heard of who seems to produce nothing but patents, filing a lawsuit against a ton of companies in East Texas (of course). This one, sent in by the Bored SysAdmin, involves a company called The Pacid Group, suing Asus, Samsung, Sony, Sony Ericsson, Fujitsu, LG, Gigabyte, GBT, MSI, Motorola, Research in Motion, Nikon, Microsoft, Nintendo, HTC and Palm, claiming that they all violate two of its patents (5,963,646 and 6,049,612) on encryption. While it's often difficult to find any information on the no name companies who sue big companies for patent infringement, at least The Pacid Group has a website, where it clearly shows the company's only products: patents.

As we've seen in other similar lawsuits, the company appears to think that pretty much every bit of modern technology violates its patents. According to the lawsuit, all of the following types of products may violate these patents: laptops, mobile phones, printers, routers, digital cameras, Blu-ray disk players, gaming devices, wireless adapters and portable media players. Now, sure, you could make the claim that all of these companies found these patents from a company no one had heard of, and decided to "copy" the idea into their product. Or, the fact that this basic idea appears in so many places might lead you to conclude that the idea was the natural progression of the technology and obvious to those skilled in the art, and thus not deserving of a patent. But that would make sense.

Remember back when 3Com was a big innovative company coming up with interesting new products? What happened since then? Well, as we've seen over and over again, once a company runs into trouble continuing to innovate, its last ditch effort to stay in business is to start suing everyone for patent infringement. Step up to the plate, 3Com. The company set up a subsidiary specifically for suing other companies for patent infringement and just sued Acer, Apple, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, HP, Sony, and Toshiba. Oh, and take a guess where this "subsidiary" set up shop? East Texas... of course. All the better to file patent lawsuits apparently...

To hear some in the entertainment industry tell the story, you'd think that BitTorrent was an evil technology designed with no redeeming value whatsoever. But, of course, there are tons of legitimate uses for it in a more efficient and economic way to distribute files by spreading the burden out. It's great for Linux distributions, for example. And now it's nice to see more and more companies recognizing that there's value in using BitTorrent technology to their advantage. Apparently, the latest is computer maker Asus, which is using BitTorrent for many software downloads. As the article points out, this is hardly revolutionary, but it is nice to see large corporations recognizing the usefulness of the technology.

The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting story looking at the rise of dirt-cheap laptops and the potential impact these laptops will have in developing countries. It gives a fair amount of attention to the One Laptop Per Child project, which was obviously one of the early players in this space. I've had my share of criticisms of the OLPC project, but one thing I do have to give them credit for is that their XO laptop seems to be very competitive with the laptops being offered by commercial companies. Most of them, such as the Asus Eee PC, are priced in the $299 to $399 range; it appears that no one has yet figured out how to produce a full-featured laptop at that magic $100 price point. The thing this article does highlight, though, is that OLPC is operating in an increasingly competitive market. OLPC head Nicholas Negroponte says "I don't want to compete with anyone," but he's going to have to compete whether he likes it or not.

One of the most intriguing competitors is Ncomputing, which is trying to resurrect the dumb terminal model for people on a shoestring budget. Ncomputing uses a cheap ($350) PC as a server to drive a bunch of ridiculously cheap ($70) terminals. Dumb terminals are almost as old as the computing industry itself, but getting the terminals to be this cheap certainly opens things up to new markets by bringing hardware costs within reach of that magic $100 price point. Of course, these dumb terminals won't be as portable as an XO laptop, and they likely require more tech support. Schools in developing countries will have to weigh those disadvantages against the XO's higher price and decide what will serve their students best. And that's the way it should be: more competition means that end users will be able to choose the computing solution that best fits their unique circumstances and budget.