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Google Bid Pi Billion Dollars For Nortel Patents

Posted by Soulskill on from the lighter-side-of-patent-news dept.

mikejuk writes "Google mystified other participants in an auction for patents last week by their choice of bids. They weren't the round regular numbers that are normally expected. After first bidding $1,902,160,540 — a reference to Brun's constant — and later bidding $2,614,972,128 for the Meissel-Mertens constant, they ended up submitting a bid for $3.14159 billion. Google ended up losing the auction — but was that a deliberate ploy?"

8 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. The deal fails when Nortel askes for exact change. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The deal fails when Nortel askes for exact change.

  2. Weird bid numbers are normal for large bids by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you're willing to bid $3 billion for something, the last thing you want is for someone to bid $3 000 000 001.00, and beat you in the bid. So it is quite routine for bids on large contracts with a closed bidding process to use unusual numbers rather than round numbers. I've seen this in multi-tens or hundreds of million-dollar land acreage bids for the rights to drill for oil. They'll bid $30 545 777.88, and weird things like that. Usually the "extra bit" is a small percentage of the total bid amount, but if you're going to do that, why not have some fun with it? And if you're "mystifying" the other participants, good! That's the whole point -- to keep them guessing and prevent them from figuring out your strategy so they can't bid $1 more.

  3. Patents have irrational value by tdwebste · · Score: 5, Funny

    All these bids are irrational numbers.

    I think the message is clear. Patents have irrational value.

  4. Big pies by Groo+Wanderer · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's a big piece of pi.

                    -Charlie

  5. Principals didn't get it by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'll bet dimes to dollars none of the principals on this deal "got it". It's science, after all, and scientists are just manual laborers, in the same sort of class as plumbers. The only good people in society are in finance and top corporate management.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  6. Pi by ukemike · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's a nice round number.

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    -- QED
    1. Re:Pi by Alex+Zepeda · · Score: 4, Funny

      I thought pie are square?

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      The revolution will be mocked
  7. Re:Of course they lost! by icebike · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm pretty sure it wasn't the math gods they were trying to provoke.

    Instead it looks as if they were in a non-serious bidding game to make the others over pay for what are probably soon obsolete patents anyway.

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    Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.