Google and Yahoo Settle Overture Lawsuit

An anonymous reader writes "Google and Yahoo have apparently settled their ongoing lawsuit involving patented on-line ad technology owned by Yahoo subsidiary Overture. (U.S. Patent 6,269,361). According to reports, Google will issue 2.7 million common shares to Yahoo in return for a license. Read more about the infringement suit here. This move is expected to lower any potential downsides to Google's upcoming IPO."

Comments

Shares as cash?

[usefool]

Is it a common practice nowadays to use shares (IPO even) for payment?

My understanding is that if a share is not sold, you don't have a cent yet in your pocket.

The article estimated that would net Yahoo as much as an additional $149 million at the high end of Google's expected IPO price range. However, could (and would) Yahoo sell all shares at the high end price though?

Yahoo already owned some of Google

[Ars-Fartsica]

Yahoo was an early funder of Google and alreay had I think 2% of the company. This number may be off but Yahoo did have ownership before this settlement.

Things get worse and worse everyday for Google, and to think they had months when the hype was absolutely unreal, yet they failed to capitalize. To quote Richard Russell, the guru market timer: "Google may know the web, but they know nothing about markets".

Re:It is a myth that patents are incentives

[lothar97]

It is funny you should say this because some of the most creative geniuses in the history of the world (Isaac Newton, Mozart, Beethoven, Blaise Pascal, Rene Descartes, etc...) had no patent protection whatsoever. And as far as someone else making money from my ideas is concerned, so what?

For the record, patents protect inventions (such as the Flowbee, and not ideas such as gravity (Newton), metaphysics (Descartes). I imagine that since Pascal was producing adding machines, he likely would've liked protection for his invention. The Wright brothers did not get a patent for flying, or the Bernoulli Effect, they got a patent for a machine that performed these functions. As for Mozart & Beethoven, this is not patent law- it's copyright. And yes, those two were quite wealthy back in their time.

There are people in the third world right now who are laughing at your patent laws. They're selling copies of Windows and MS Office in the streets for pennies on the dollar. Heck, they're laughing at them right here in the US. Music download has become an addictive pasttime for some people.

This is copyright law again, as the underlying issue is protecting an original work of authorship. I agree with you on this part. The copyright holders in the US are doing a terrible job of adapting to new technologies. As for patents in the Third World, like pharaceuticals, that's messed up as well. Drugs are needed in certain areas, and should be available- but companies still need to make money.