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Apple and Google Joining Forces On Kodak Patents Bid
TrueSatan writes "Bloomberg reports that Apple and Google have partnered to make a bid of more than $500 million for the Kodak patent portfolio. The bid relates to Kodak's 1,100 imaging patents. 'Kodak obtained commitments for $830 million exit financing last month, contingent on its sale of the digital imaging patents for at least $500 million.' This is likely to be an opening bid, with the final figure being far larger. By comparison, a group including Apple, Microsoft, and RIM bought Nortel's 6000+ patents for $4.5 billion last year. 'Google lost the auction for those patents after making an initial offer of $900 million.'"
Two behemoths fighting it out to have more power and control. Just what everyone needs.
They may take our patents... but they'll never take our Kodak Moments.
Which one is the 'anykey'?
It's too bad the cash from this patent selloff won't likely be seen in the local economy of Rochester, NY, Kodak's home town. We've pretty much given up completely on the once largest local employer. Too many of my friends have long since had severance packages run out. She's not sinking, rather she's already resting on the bottom of the ocean flapping a bit.
I wonder what is actually in the patent portfolio that Google and Apple can sue each other over in 5 years.
Google is mostly trying to sleaze their hidden tracking and platforms to play the big game. They know they need this tracking to further their services. Not their search service but their ad service.
Stop deluding yourself; everyone already knows this.
Hell, at least with Microsoft and PAID software I know I'm not losing my privacy.
Haha. Hahaha. Bwahahaha.
There seems to be a lot of corporate allegiance (to Google, Apple, even Microsoft, text editors, etc). It's like a modern version of religion so facts and reality don't apply.
The only reason a patent can be sold during a bankruptcy is because the patent is recorded as an asset on the books. (yet "goodwill" can also be valued as an asset but cannot be sold...)
The original purpose of patents was to publicly record trade secrets so that they would not be lost to future generations. If a company goes bankrupt, shouldn't their limited monopoly be opened to the public?
Imagine an investment of 500 Million into Libreoffice development. Imagine 50 Million for Wine. That would make a real difference. The patent system is like a parasitarian economy created on top of the markets. It should be abolished. But we won't get 5 million $ for patent reformists.
There is no reason for you to be marked "Troll."
Someone manages to get a huge long first post. That post repeats the standard Microsoft / Facebook trolling line that Google has gone downhill. That post SHOUTS and SCREAMS. The post mentions privacy violation without mentioning Facebook, about the only company willing to sell on fully identifiable material about any user on to almost anybody who signs up as a "developer".
Worst of all, the job of the "Troll" is to hijack the conversation and direct it elsewhere. In my case back to the topic on hand. We are discussing about which company has the worst privacy record which is completely offtopic; you are discussing meta issues as old as the hills (I am sure there one early comment on Slashdot: "Slashdot has gone downhill since comments started started last week"). Why aren't we discussing:
Why the hell are Google being forced to spend money on supporting Lawyers and the legal system instead of putting that money into development and "innovation"?
Are these legitimate patents on a real "inventions" or are they unconstitutional and illegal attempts to control freedom of thought and expression by using the USPTO to circumvent the first amendment and the US constitutions restrictions on patenting mathematics?
Is it just software patents that are broken, or is has the entire patent system become outdated? Is this maybe an example of the patent system working to protect the Kodak pensioners? Do you deserve money if your company fails to put it's invention out to real customers?
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
High UID brand new account, anti-Google, pro-Microsoft, long first post, no other posting history shill is back again.
I guess Microsoft started paying for their subscription to Fuckface & Wankhead or whatever that PR agency is called.
Or maybe Florian Mueller is doing a bit of shilling on the side now that the mainstream press seems to have finally realised he's wrong about just about everything since 99% of the patent claims against Android would successfully win against Android, and, er, didn't. Hard times to be a shill I guess now that the world has woken up to the FUD.
The patent system is to supposed to protect ideas but what it does instead is protect monopolies and stifles creative destruction.
I can understand Kodak owning some patents for digital imaging, but 1100? Are there really 1100 different ways of doing digital imaging, or just 1100 obvious ways of combining seven novel ideas?
I don't know, there's over 5000 different ways to combine 7 ideas. I'm betting it was 6.
As everything else that turned evil (Big Brother, Apartheid, international law, stocks), the original idea was dutch. Octroois were designed to make a design public, registered to the owner, so others could implement it AND pay for it. The idea was NOT to give a company a monopoly on an idea, the goal was the EXACT opposite. That the idea of ONE man could be used by anyone BUT they had to pay for it.
It started because people invented novel ways for water management were it was obvious the ideas belonged to one person but were of use to everyone, so it made sense to allow everyone to implement a new pump yet still reward the original inventor. It was the FRAND idea taken even further and core to the system.
This system ALSO insured something else, an octrooi HAD to be a real design. After all, the idea of pumping water was hardly new. You would ONLY play to use a new octrooi if it gave you the full design to build a new pump. Patents ARE supposed to be the same, a patent application should include all the details needed for a master in the craft to build the item. You CANNOT patent merely an idea or a business plan because there is nothing there that a CRAFTSMAN (NOT AN INVENTOR) can use to build. Collect all the patents related to the internal combustion engine, and you can build one. Collect the patents on a Apple patent, and you can build nothing but a legal case in a bought court.
It doesn't mean ALL patents are useless but a lot are. There is also a practice as done by Lego of patenting EVERYTHING you can think off just to stop someone else from doing anything. Lego made claims for all the alternative ideas they could think of to make building blocks so nobody could make anything even remotely similar. That there are patents for eternal motion machines should tell you enough, how can a craftsman skilled in the trade possibly make an eternal motion machine? Patents don't even have to work, so why not patent all your failed research just to prevent someone else from making it work?
The entire patent system lost its original goal. It was designed to SPREAD inventions while the original inventor was compensated and instead is used to limit the spread of inventions, stifle new invenstions and keep the rich rich.
But hey, good luck getting it to change. When you do, why not reform wallstreet at the same time to get the stock market to be about investment instead of speculation again? Oh and that UN thing to be about peace rather then self interests? That would be nice to if you are out fixing the world.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You actually permit the tracking to track you?
Why don't you run down to your local electronics outlet. Or, Newegg, if you prefer. Grab one of the newer Netgear routers. Bring it home, and flash it with a generic Tomato firmware. Then, flash it again, with Toastman's flavored Tomato. In the startup scripts, you can tell the router to download an adblocking list, at boot up, then every xxx number of hours afterward.
I use a lot of Google services. But, google's tracking servers are blocked. Google's adservers are blocked. I almost never see adverts, unless they are hosted on the site that I am visiting.
Of course, if you're sophisticated enough to know that Google is tracking you, and how they are tracking you - then you already knew how to block it, right?
UNLESS, of course, you're just parroting something you read somewhere.
As for the patents - I can't get terribly excited that Google is building up a portfolio. Every large corporation in the business has it's portfolio. And, every large corporation in the business uses, or threatens to use, their portfolio to put other corporations out of business. Others have defended Google and/or other corporations in the past for maintaining "defensive portfolios". There's really nothing to see here, people. Take a look, and move along - there are much more exciting attractions down the street.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
This discussion thread was about the accusation that Google is "the web's LARGEST PRIVACY VIOLATION" and that we "SUPPORT THEM?"
Google is a pioneer of techniques, a number of them patented, which allow them to hold data about you whilst ensuring that it is anonymized even to their own employees, let alone to outside advertising agencies.
Facebook, on the other hand, directly shares your full profile including your PII with it's partners in advertising and apps. That clearly makes them a larger "PRIVACY VIOLATION" than Google and makes them 100% on topic in this particular thread which has, for some reason, been voted up extremely high.
I wonder if the reason that Facebook vilolates privacy so much more strongly than Google is because they fear Google's patents? That would be strange when Google never initiated patent action against anyone yet. Maybe it's because that's a missing element in Microsoft's portfolio and that's what attracted Microsoft to invest so heavily in Facebook? Do you think Google's increasing patent portfolio will increase or decrease privacy on the internet?
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
well you have the picture
you have the picture taken in different light
you have the same picture taken in
aww hell, the patent office successfully never read 1100 patents and just rubberstamped them. That's basically what it was.
You did not refute a single one.
Have a look in the history of every article in the last year which matches the string "Google". You will find that either as first post, or very soon afterwards there is a post which puts up lines like "Google is the worst privacy violator" "Google has become worse than Microsoft" etc. etc. In response to those posts will be many posts which completely refute your points. This has been repeated so often it's not funny. I have even posted in some of those discussions myself. For us to repeat those discussions would be "redundant" and I would hate that.
One of the biggest and most common examples of these accusations of Google becoming 'just as bad' is that their buying up patents is a sign they will become just as bad as Microsoft, which is using stupid patents like the one on the FAT filesystem to attack smaller developers (have a look at this Slashdot discussion about TomTom for example). However, we have not yet seen any evidence of this. Google still hasn't sued any small developer companies. However, this is relevant to our topic of discussion because Google working with Apple is new.
Do you think that now that Google has teamed up with Apple it is a sign that they want to join Apple's attacks on competitors? Maybe instead you think that this is a sign that Apple has come to its senses and realised that Microsoft is still a threat to our chances of a standardised mixed computing environment where Google just wants that system to exist so they can continue to have a chance to provide search and advertising?
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
that ban the sale or trade of patents. patents were designed to help individuals
One of they ways they were designed to help the individual was to allow the individual to sell the patent to someone who could do something with it.
Why is slashdot not preventing posting AC or new accounts from posting within ten minutes of a story going up?
I can understand Kodak owning some patents for digital imaging, but 1100? Are there really 1100 different ways of doing digital imaging, or just 1100 obvious ways of combining seven novel ideas?
Honestly? Without having looked into it, I'm willing to bet that quite a lot of those patents are legitimate old-style "proper" patents on real worthwhile things that Slashdotters would approve of. Bear in mind that Kodak did quite a lot of research into this, and probably came up with a lot of stuff, they just never commercialised it successfully.
Of course, these patents may be being bought and used for "bad" reasons, but that doesn't mean they were crappy patents in the first place.
Are there really 1100 different ways of doing digital imaging, or just 1100 obvious ways of combining seven novel ideas?
Do you genuinely believe that there are only seven truly patentable ideas in digital imaging?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Yep, the fact that the real story here, the ONLY fucking story, is Apple joining forces with Google, so I guess troll points for the troll for hijacking such a momentous event *sigh*.