Google Rips Apple, Microsoft

The smartphone wars are getting ugly: Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, wrote a post on the company’s official blog ripping into Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle for an “organized, hostile campaign against Android … waged through bogus patents.” Drummond accused the companies of “banding together” to buy old patents so Google can’t get them, and suing smartphone and tablet makers that use Android for patent infringement. “Patents were meant to encourage innovation, but lately they are being used as a weapon to stop it,” Drummond wrote. Microsoft replied by saying that it recently asked Google to bid jointly for a group of patents from Novell, and Google said no.