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Patents Google Bought From IBM Are "Weak"
holy_calamity writes "Slashdot noted in September that Google had bought 1023 patents from IBM. Now IP analytics firms IPVision says they're a 'mixed bag' of mostly unrelated patents that won't be much use in defending against competitors such as Microsoft or Apple. Patents are most useful when they are tightly linked into clusters by references, such that they cover every angle on an idea, something Google's new collection lacks."
IBM's patents might be useless for defending against MS & Apple (after all they bought Motorola for this reason) but they might prove useful for other plans that Google might have
The patents are weak? Fucking patents are weak. You're weak.
Er, the vast majority of patents being flung around in all the crazy control-freak corporate slap-fights we've seen recently seem to be horribly weak (of the "should never have been granted" variety). That hasn't stopped them from being flung around like monkeys do with, er, you know, and it apparently hasn't stopped other companies from being scared of them.
And in the end, fear is the goal...
We live, as we dream -- alone....
....is this listed on /. under "apple"?
TFA seems like an advert for some patent analysis software.
But since they've inheritied 16000 from Motorola, and another 1000 from IBM and I'm sure they're bidding on others, I'm sure the Google patent portfolio will do just fine.
On it's own Google's word processor isn't the greatest. Add the rest of the Google Apps portfolio, and suddenly you have something interesting.
So.. Who's "IPVision" and why do we care what they think? For all we know they could be an industry shill looking to perpetuate the awful mess that is "IP" law. Google's made lots of enemies and they're getting in to the IP game by proxy. Because companies are turning to that avenue of attack, rather than legitimate competition.
This is what's wrong with the patent system. The idea that you should cover every angle of an idea rather than just patenting the fundamental technology behind it. When did we go from patenting technology to patenting the application?
For example. Canon has scores of patents related to cameras and imaging technology. Rightfully so. They are useful patents. But then some of them are like this beauty. Now here's an patent which covers the use of fuel cells in electronic equipment. Think about that for a second. Covering the frigging obvious use of this technology which the entire world is hoping will replace batteries, with a patent for using the technology (which is not practical yet) in an electronic device.
We need a cleansing fire. The patent office and all their data should burn down, and all employees should be replaced. The patent system needs to be re-written by some people with zero experience in it. As Einstein said, "Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them."
Google isn't stupid. More importantly, Google's lawyers aren't stupid. And if there's one thing Google's good at, it's sifting through masses of data, teasing out the relationships and putting them together. So I'm assuming Google has a plan and it's not completely half-baked. We'll have to see whether it's successful or not, but they do have a plan.
It is by now an accepted concept, that 'patent war' thing is. And, we are all little bitches caught in the fight in between 4 major companies, regardless of what the size of our small business/outfit is... What we do does not matter zit. the winner takes it all. and we got to this point despite everything that has been done, everything that has been said.
This tells me patents are unworkable.
Read radical news here
What makes a patent strong is how much money the holder is willing to try to enforce it.
Consider what IBM had to do to defend itself against SCO. The claims were non-existent, the patents were non-existent, and yet it dragged on for years.
So if Google could really cause another competitor to squirm. Look at Apple; they managed to convince a judge the shape of an iPad and iPhone are unique and worthy of protection and so they're used to cause Samsung pain. It doesn't matter if its valid or not, Samsung can't sell their devices.
Patents are legal tools to aid in delaying a competitor. Once you understand that, then the real value of patents become clear.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Precisely; what they (er, well, corporations) are afraid of is uncertainty, and hard-to-predict risk. Software patents are a sufficiently wacky area that it's difficult to say what the courts will rule in any particular case, and any time somebody's waving a big bundle of patents at you, there's a danger you'll get reamed (regardless of what "IP analytics firms IPVision" [who?] said).
So instead of taking on that risk—however silly the patents in question might seem—they'd much rather pay or deal or whatever. Such payoffs may be morally in the same realm as protection money, but at least they're budgetable...
The only real solution to this mess is to get rid of software patents entirely.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
When I read this article I had flashbacks to the spurious crap that people used in ye olde Internet bubble. Or maybe the CDO credit bubble. In short, making arbitrary valuations by looking at second or third order artifacts and completely ignoring the value of the underlying thing.
What makes a good patent is the exact opposite of what these guys suggest. The membership of a patent 'thicket' that they regard as indicating patent quality is really an artifact of the way in which a single potential invention now gets salimi sliced into the maximum number of applications. This allows the corporation which owns the patents to brag about the size of its patent pile, it allows the employees who wrote the patents to maximize the number of patent bonuses they get and it obviously results in the greatest number of billable hours for the patent lawyers. In short, it's a win-win-win!
In reality, the most valuable patents should be ones that are as unrelated as possible to anything that went before and which stand completely on their own merits. Patents where any expert would look at and say 'I've never seen anything quite like that before'. However, making that judgment call requires that you actually analyze every patent in the portfolio in detail. Just as I'm sure the bankers carried out a detailed analysis of every underlying debt when they were trading CDOs...