Microsoft and Apple unleash thermonuclear war on Google & Android

Former Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs didn't like Android and he told his biographer Walter Isaacson that he would "destroy Android" because it was "a stolen product" and said that he was "willing to go thermonuclear war" on the platform...

The Rockstar Consortium, a joint venture owned by Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Ericsson, and Sony, have kicked into motion a barrage of lawsuits against a raft of defendants that include Google, Samsung, LG Electronics, HTC, and Huawei, all big payers in the Android market.

Rockstar bought the patents being used here during Nortel's bankruptcy auction. At the time it is clear that Google understood the value of these patents because the company bid as much as $4.4 billion in order to get its hands on them. Rockstar outbid the search giant with a $4.5 billion bid.

...The Rockstar Consortium, which is what is known in the business as a non-practicing entity, or, less generously, a "patent troll," is a company created specifically to buy and sell patents, without creating any actual products or innovations themselves.