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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.
"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.
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.
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."
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.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
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.