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Google Enlarges Warchest With 1023 IBM Patents
First time accepted submitter ElBeano writes "Google has continued to beef up its patent portfolio in the face of the onslaught from Apple and Microsoft. The best defense is a good offense. 'Google is building an arsenal of patents that the company has said is largely designed to counter a "hostile, organized campaign" by companies including Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. against the Android operating system for mobile devices. Google had already acquired 1,030 patents from IBM in a transaction recorded in July, and will obtain more than 17,000 with its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.'"
1023? That is a suspiciously round number...
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
I think what's really stupid about software patents is that you can't find out what part of your software is infringing on another company's patents. That's the idiotic part. Hardware patents, of course. Samsung can learn immediately what Apple's specific complaints are. But software patents remain hidden, so that Google can't go back and change whatever code is infringing on their competitor. You don't even need to get rid of patents. Just get rid of this ridiculous veil of secrecy garbage.
Hard to believe people get paid to sift through all these garbage patents looking for infractions. What a colossal waste of productive time.
OT - still better than having the same people turning politicians, don't you think?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Google takes these patents subject to existing cross licenses. How many competitors (such as Apple and MS) already have cross licenses with IBM that cover these?
I'm quite sure there is a clause in the cross licencing that if you take legal action the licencing agreement is null and void.
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend." They can pass the patents to Google and let Google take the heat and fight the fight and they can generally stay out of it - for them that's good. Besides, this will surely strengthen the Google-IBM relationship and I'm sure there were other terms and conditions set out on the transfer that will be beneficial to IBM.
It should further be noted that IBM has actually taken patents for things and allowed totally free use simply to prevent anyone from controlling some fundamental technology. As far as patents go they seem like the good guys.
I have a feeling that if I were to make my own cell phone from scratch, without looking at a single patent and using only obvious ideas off the top of my head, I'd owe a lot of people a lot of money.
Actually this is more likely to stop the patent wars in this part of the industry then set them off.
The thing with software patents is that their primary effect (other than to allow patent trolls to hold up people who make stuff) is to prevent a new player from entering an existing market. The existing players have a whole arsenal of software patents and anybody who wants to enter the market will be infringing a slew of them no matter what, so the existing players can sue them and enjoin them legally from entering the market. And most of the time the new entrant knows that ahead of time and just doesn't bother.
In this case the new entrant was Google, so what happened is that everybody who had been in the market for a while and had a patent arsenal started to shake them down and demand high royalties or try to keep their products off of the market, because Google has never been in the mobile device market before and so didn't have a relevant patent arsenal with which to ward of the incumbents' attacks.
What Google is doing now is buying their way into the club. (Notice that only large companies sitting on a mountain of cash can do this -- the little guy is fucked.) If they buy these billions of dollars worth of patents then they can threaten the incumbents in the same way that the incumbents are threatening them, and at the end of the day they all just end up cross-licensing and Google becomes one of the incumbents going forward.
At that point companies can go back to competing based on merit, but only those companies that can afford to buy their way into the market. The patent system excludes everyone else.
Because prior to Google buying the IBM and Motorola patents they had nothing to offer. Why would Apple (or Microsoft, or Samsung, or anyone else) let Google just use their patents when Google has nothing of value to offer them? That is just throwing away money. Now that Google has something to offer they are in a better position to make such a deal.
Id also buyout Kodak...then tell Apple they have remove cameras from their iphones :)
That makes sense. Now that Google has all these patents, do you think it will go down that way (cross-licensing)?
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War", Section VI, Lines 1-2:
1. Sun Tzu said: Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted.
2. Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him.
So now instead of paying protection money they are paying stupid money for Motorola and billions more buying patents from IBM and others
Fixed that for you. As for Google's motivation, probably "if once you have paid him the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane."
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Those of you who still believe there is value to "Intellectual Property", can you please think about where this "Patent Race" is leading us?
We've probably passed the point where any new product or innovation is safe from having an army of lawyers descend to destroy it.
Now tell me how patents "encourage innovation". Tell me how patents "protect innovators".
When the patent portfolios of a handful of the biggest corporations reaches critical mass, there won't be a single inventor or innovator who is safe or whose ideas are protected. It will stifle innovation in a much worse way than any "counterfeiting" or "piracy" ever could. There's a good chance that we've already reached that point.
No, I don't believe there is any longer a single valid argument for "intellectual property" laws, of any kind. Not trademark, not copyright, and certainly not patents.
You are welcome on my lawn.
But this is exactly what economic theory predicts. Intervene in the market with good intentions -- e.g. create monopoly profits for innovators -- and watch your "new" rules being exploited by rent-seekers, who then use the monopolistic profits to lobby for furthering the rules, further hampering the economy. The theory is very clear and explicit about it -- and has always been ignored in favor of patents.
The other prediction of the theory is that since the profit/loss is unevenly distributed (many people have a small loss, but few people reap enormous benefits), even in a democracy you're unlikely to see a change in the rules unless the loss becomes large enough that is painful to most individuals so that they take action. So, the crazy patent rules will be with us for a long time.
Why should they pay their competitors when they can pay similar money to someone who isn't trying to sue them out of the market?
Mel, the cook on Alice...
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
IBM is not on the good side of the patent war. They make millions every year on patents alone. They nearly sued SUN into the ground, among other patents, for a patent on drawing a line. Here is a quote by an IBM lawyer:
"maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"
IBM likes their patents.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You clearly dont know much about this issue.
First, Google *is* paying Microsoft licensing for various things in their Android phones. However, this transaction only applies to the Android phones made by Google. They do not apply to the Android Phones made by others.
Google knew there was patent issues and they actually resolved them BY LICENSING THE VARIOUS PATENTS.
The evil part is that even though Google knew there were patent issues, they invited every other manufacturer to go ahead and just use the OS without getting their own licenses. Google fucked everyone.
"His name was James Damore."
Cross licensing gets rid of the concept of one party still attacking another for the most part. Party A sues Party B: result Party A either gets money or Party B has to stop doing what they are doing. However if Party B has its own trove of patents, the idea of cross licensing comes through by Party B telling Party A "Hey, if you don't back that lawsuit off, we will sue you for patents x, y and z." At that point both parties are pretty much in a stalemate - so they agree that Party A can use patents x, y and z while Party B holds off suing them.
Both parties will pretty much want to keep doing what they are doing, so they rattle their sabres for a while until an equilibrium is reached with the patents.
If (like in this case) one of the parties is new to the group or bought up a bunch of patents, they can still be attacked - but they already know what their patents are worth to the other companies - they were likely already using them as part of some agreement previously. If they still get sued, they (as the new patent owners) can revoke previous agreements allowing the other companies use of their patents. If this happens, then basically the whole things starts from the beginning of this post until an equilibrium is reached.
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That's because it would then allow IBM to incorporate any improvements more quickly into Lotus (competitor to both OO and LO) while at the same time slowing down improvements to LO (because they would have to delay even longer to review, improve, and approve any of the new stuff) and simultaneously giving them (IBM) and Oracle a way to muscle things where the Document Foundation is concerned.
That entire situation was "I scratch your back, you scratch mine."
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
Go back and look at the history. Nokia and Motorola started the patent wars attacking Apple.
And Apple, rather than finding some quiet resolution, got out their torches and spread the fire all over the place by suing everyone in the market, including the Android phone makers who had never sued Apple to begin with.
The only people currently directly suing Google is Oracle and judging by the Lindholm email they have very good reason to.
The Lindholm email stands for nothing but the proposition that Google at one time considered negotiating a license for Java. It has nothing to do with whether Dalvik infringes the same copyrights or patents or whether the patents are even valid.
Microsoft and Apple both are sitting on many $10Billion's of cash. Paying a couple dollars to them to license technology which has obviously been copied isn't going to give with company and more of an advantage in the market place than they already have.
As the other poster above pointed out, "once you have paid him the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane." It isn't a matter of driving your competitors out of business by depriving them of revenue, it's a matter of preventing them from shaking down your phone manufacturers. And in any event, why reward Apple and Microsoft for their hostile behavior? It would only encourage them.
In fact Microsoft has already offered Google to join syndicates to purchase patents so they don't end up in the hands on non practicing patent trolls. The fact that Google refuses to join in and play nice says a lot about their evil litigious intentions.
Google wants to acquire patents to use as leverage against Microsoft to prevent them shaking down Android phone makers. A patent jointly owned by Microsoft can hardly be used as leverage against Microsoft. And Microsoft forming a coalition to outbid Google on the Nortel patents can hardly be considered an effort to keep them out of the hands of "non practicing patent trolls" -- if that was their only concern then Google buying them by itself would have completely alleviated it and there would be no explanation for Microsoft's actions.
Paying money as part of a cross license agreement is kinda standard practice in the technology industry
So was paying money to mobsters back in the day.
While you might not agree with software patents, they are in currently part of the legal system.
Which is why I never said "patents are illegal", but said that patents are an immoral extortion racket. The fact that our legal system currently endorses immoral extortion rackets is a flaw, not a feature.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Google knew there was patent issues and they actually resolved them BY LICENSING THE VARIOUS PATENTS.
The evil part is that even though Google knew there were patent issues, they invited every other manufacturer to go ahead and just use the OS without getting their own licenses. Google fucked everyone.
That's a pretty extrordinary claim. I'd really like to see some sort of proof. Specifically that (a) google licensed the relevant patents and (b) google encouraged others to violate them. That's no joke, a citation that backs up those claims would go right into my bookmarks.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It was quiet because all the major players in the field are members of the GSM Alliance where they agree to cross-license patents in order to gain access to the GSM technologies at a cheap rate.
Apples open shots were due to them demanding the same rates as GSM Alliance members but refusing to put their patents into the pot like everyone else did.
"Because prior to Google buying the IBM and Motorola patents they had nothing to offer. Why would Apple (or Microsoft, or Samsung, or anyone else) let Google just use their patents when Google has nothing of value to offer them? That is just throwing away money. Now that Google has something to offer they are in a better position to make such a deal."
Yes, it's not that Google lacks really good patents, it's just that those really good patents are in things like search.
The issue is that companies are using patents to try and build a stranglehold on certain markets. Microsoft's long been using them to try and ensure the desktop OS market is theirs and only theirs, Apple has recently been using them to try and corner the cellphone market, and Google if any serious search competition came along would probably start using them there too.
None of these companies want to compete in their most lucrative markets, and that's where they are using the patents.
This is a real problem though, because it demonstrates how stupid the US patent system is- being a major player in a particular market means you no longer have to compete on your merits, you can just try and keep everyone else out with litigation.
What's happening in the cellphone market is that people just outright don't want to be kept out because they realise it's a lucrative market, and as hard as Apple tries, it's going to be forced into licensing deals in the end, just as it was when it tried things on with Nokia.
It's a fine example of how the patent system in the US works counter to what it was intended for, it's an excellent demonstration as to why it causes companies to decided to try and litigate rather than innovate. I just don't know how long it can go on for, as it's not just the US it hurts but the whole world as no manufacturer can shun a market as big as the US. The US needs to reform it's patent system now, not just for itself but for everyone, and even Europe has some work to do judging by the way it's been honouring Apple's absurd design patents that involve really nothing much more than rectangles with rounded corners.
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He doesn't give a damn.
I wish I were a moron.
My God! Perhaps I am.
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