FORTUNE — FOSS Patents‘ Florian Mueller used the discovery Friday that Fujifilm has filed a patent infringement suit against Google (GOOG) subsidiary Motorola Mobility to ask why it is that Android attracts so many intellectual property lawsuits.
He’s not talking about patent trolls. They sue everybody, including Apple (AAPL).
He’s talking about publicly traded companies with multibillion dollar market caps. Fujifilm is the seventh to file a patent infringement suit against Android, joining Apple (market cap: $565.68 billion), Oracle (ORCL) and Nokia — and the Nokia suit was settled last year.
“Does [Apple] do a better job at steering clear of infringement than Google does?,” Mueller asks. “Does it do a better job at working out license deals or non-aggression pacts with others in the industry? Honestly, I don’t know what Apple does because they obviously don’t tell the public what their dealings with other industry players are like. But whatever they do, they show that the commercial success of a platform is only one of the relevant factors. Android’s IP issues are not simply a function of its market share. There must be some more fundamental problems.”
As an Android user, Mueller says he is rooting for Google to address its problems more effectively. But based on its executives’ public statements, he suspects they’re in a state of IP denial.
It’s a provocative piece. You can read it here.
