We were pretty intrigued last September when Boston-based Skyhook Wireless filed a pair of suits against Google related to Skyhook’s smartphone positioning technology, XPS, which uses a database of Wi-Fi hotspots to home in on users’ locations. Skyhook claimed in a Massachusetts state court antitrust and tortious interference complaint that Google was stifling competition from third-party creators of Android applications and had improperly blocked Motorola from shipping Skyhook-equipped devices. And the formidable Morgan Chu and John Hueston of Irell & Manella were backing Skyhook in both the antitrust suit and a Boston federal district court patent infringement complaint concerning the same technology.
If Google didn’t take Skyhook seriously then, we’re betting it does now: On May 2, Boston State Court Judge Judith Fabricant denied Google’s motion for summary judgment or dismissal of Skyhook’s antitrust suit. The judge found that although Google had contracts with Motorola and Samsung that allowed it to block distribution of devices that it found incompatible with Android, Skyhook could still try to build a case that Google had ulterior motives when it objected to Skyhook’s deals with the two smartphone companies.
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