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Nortel Patent Sale Gets DoJ Review

Posted by Soulskill on from the use-your-powers-for-good dept.

gavron writes "The US Department of Justice will review the Nortel patent sale to the entity formed by Apple, Microsoft, and others. This is the same sale that the Canadian authorities declined to review because the $4B+ deal was valued by them at less than $328M. According to a (paywalled) Wall Street Journal report, 'The Justice Department wants to know whether [the consortium] intends to use them defensively to deter patent lawsuits against its members, or offensively against rivals.'"

7 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. So one intent is better than another? by Karhgath · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How are either offensive or defensive patents better than the other really? They both make a joke of the patent system. The question should be: do they intend to use them to innovate or not? Isn't that the reason we have patents?

    Buying defensive patents is, IMHO, worse than buying submarine patents and suing someone. I mean business-wise. You are spending millions to buy something that will not even help you make money or be more profitable. Use that to do R&D and innovate. Don't they have shareholders? At least patent trolls have a clear business plan...

    This is the (corporate) cold war all over again: My arsenal is bigger than yours!

    At least there's a silver lining there if we get to the state of Mutually Assured Destruction: they will stop attacking each others with patents and we will move on with our lives. Or so we can hope...

    1. Re:So one intent is better than another? by artor3 · · Score: 3

      Yes, everyone agrees that the patent system as it currently exists is insane. But it is what it is. Ignoring that reality and not stocking up on defensive patents is foolish.

      Guns exist. Buying guns to hurt people is bad. Buying guns to protect people from bad guys with guns is okay. It would be nice if guns didn't exist at all, but they do, so we have to deal with it.

    2. Re:So one intent is better than another? by darkmeridian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Unless you are Google, which is responsible for the Android operating system, which is hated by Apple. If you don't have defensive patents, you are going to get sued into oblivion. Hell, the ITC might even rule that your products cannot be shipped into the United States because of infringement. I mean, Apple currently has HTC over a barrel. Do you think that HTC shareholders wished they had a few defensive patents to use against the iPhone?

      The law might suck, but businessmen have to play by the law.

      --
      A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
    3. Re:So one intent is better than another? by Asic+Eng · · Score: 3, Informative

      Well, given that innovation usually means to build new concepts on top of older ideas, or to extent older ideas - innovation means you'll have to defend yourself against other's patents.

      Nobody is using actual patent *texts* in order to innovate though:

      • Patents are basically unreadable for technical people, they are legal not technical documents. If something is actually valuable you've heard about it through other sources.
      • Patents are usually trivial, to read through the patent document takes more time than to come up with an equal or better solution.
      • Patents are usually too old. By the time they are actually granted the methods described in them have been in common use for years.
      • Reading patent literature is dangerous - if you violate a patent knowing that it existed, then your fine could turn out much higher. If you have read about an idea before, you may well use it when encountering a suitable problem - even if you don't remember where or that you read it.

      Regarding "Mutually Assured Destruction" - that can only work if there are two parties. If you have hundreds or thousands of parties involved, it's impossible that they could all be balanced against each other. In this case the patent portfolio prevents newcomers from entering the market, so it's very one-sided. And of course a patent portfolio provides virtually no defense against a company which doesn't produce anything - e.g. a law firm which buys patents.

  2. Libertarians still here by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are still libertarians here, they are just rarer and drowned out by the noisier people with ideals and no common sense or understanding of how humans work.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Libertarians still here by vux984 · · Score: 4, Funny

      There are still libertarians here, they are just rarer and drowned out by the noisier people with ideals and no common sense or understanding of how humans work.

      You mean the libertarians?

  3. Re:Value... by fractalspace · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's how much $4B US will convert to Canadian dollars shortly.