Platform Leaders to Provide Patent Shelter

摘要

On August 12, 2011, Google filed a request with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for re-examination of two patents asserted by a patent firm, Lodsys, against several Android coders. It was most probably the first public move of the Internet giant to defend Android application developers from a patent lawsuit. This is just one of a growing number of similar initiatives undertaken by other so-called "platform leaders" to protect independent complementors active on their platforms against patent assertion threats. In this paper, we first look at the rapid evolution of industry platforms and how their business model is increasingly threatened by the recent surge of patent litigation. We review the impact of these litigation threats on small and independent complementors operating on industry platforms and describe a set of alternatives that are available to them to at least alleviate the risk of patent litigation. Then, we look at the same phenomenon from the platform leaders' perspective and examine the emerging evidences on platform leaders' initiative to provide Patent Shelter to their partners. We argue that this reaction could serve two important functions: (1) it helps to maintain and reinforce a platform ecosystem, and (2) it acts as a differentiating factor for platforms relative to their rivals. Next, we show that platform leaders' defensive response could happen at two different levels: (1) providing umbrella protection and (2) defensive intervention in specific patent litigation cases. Finally, we propose a conceptual framework that helps understand platform leaders' possible case-specific reactions under six different scenarios. We analyzed the evolution of their decision-making over time and argue that our findings have implications for understanding inter and intra-platform dynamics.