Google buys 1,000 patents from IBM to defend Android

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-14/google-purchases-1-023-patents-from-ibm-to-bolster-portfolio.html

83 39 15 years ago

spdy• 15 years ago

Can is say one thing "patent reform" please.

This trend really bugs me all the big companies are spending billions of dollars on papers instead of putting it into Innovation / new products etc.

If this trend goes on and more patent trolls enter the field everyone of us needs to have a patent lawyer next to our desk. Lodsys allready proved its worth to go after the lowest hanging fruit.

I dont want to imagine what happens if one of the big tech companies turn evil.

searine• 15 years ago

Except these patents (and the massive profits they generated for IBM via this sale) are the direct result of R&D.

IBM would be crazy not to invest the profit back into R&D to develop another patent library...

Hyena• 15 years ago

Not really. Most are the direct result of IBM's system of internal rewards for patenting. This results in thousands of questionalble patents. Being that it is easier to get than eliminate a patent, IBM is a company deeply engaged in destroying the world.

cdibona• 15 years ago

Please do say 'Patent reform' to your congressperson or senator. Thanks.

mhd• 15 years ago

Exactly 1023 patents? Does Google do those jokes even in a legal context? (Maybe someone had to count them using only his fingers)

vvnraman• 15 years ago

1023 = 2^10 - 1. It would have taken all the 10 fingers.

notatoad• 15 years ago

1023=2^10, 0-indexed.

zxw• 15 years ago

1023 = 0b1111111111

daniel-cussen• 15 years ago

A lot of the time businesses don't know how to optimize certain things, and frequently prefer to choose big, round numbers. The only difference between them and Google is that regular businesses choose numbers that are simple to express in the decimal system and Google chooses numbers that are low-complexity in other ways, like the the square root of two or 1024.

sgentle• 15 years ago

Honestly, good on them. This mobile patent crap is so ludicrous and out of hand. I'm glad that even though Google has to play by the same stupid rules as everyone else, at least they get the chance to remind everyone "you know this is a big joke right?" on occasion.

Christ, imagine how many jobs all of these patent cold war billions represent. Imagine how much time and energy is going into feeding a machine whose main outcome is stifling creativity and competition.

Anechoic• 15 years ago

Serious question; would it have been cheaper to just license the patents on a royalty basis?

robot• 15 years ago

That would be like buying the bullets instead of the weapon.

barista2• 15 years ago

But I thought Google's patent play is a defensive play. So they should be looking for shields and armors not guns and bullets.

wmf• 15 years ago

Do you mean from IBM or from Apple and MS?

nl• 15 years ago

If you mean licence them from IBM: I doubt it. Google want the patents to protect its partners, and trying to arrange a licence like that would be hard. Also, protecting its partners means some are likely to be tested in court and fail, which will kill their value to IBM.

If you mean from Apple: Very doubtful. Apple wants to stop their competitors, not make money from them.

If you mean from Microsoft: Possibly for each manufacture, but in aggregate almost certainly not.

napierzaza• 15 years ago

In case you didn't notice, mobile is the next big thing and everyone who is worth anything is either spending or making billions of dollars or both.

felipemnoa• 15 years ago

It's been here for a while already.

politician• 15 years ago

I understand that patents are negotiable instruments like stock certificates, nevertheless it seems like cheating when you can simply buy creative ideas to engage in what seems like "Magic: The Gathering"-style legal warfare.

"Ha ha! My 'System and Apparatus for Propagation of Radio Signals' confers a +2 legal mumbo-jumbo bonus on my 'Transmitter switch-on in a dual-mode mobile phone'. Your move, sport."

GHFigs• 15 years ago

US Patent 5,662,332: Trading card game method of play

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sec...

brlewis• 15 years ago

I don't know how much this kind of patent warfare happens outside software. It's only in software that you can count on competitors "infringing" your "inventions" if you simply buy enough patents.

corin_• 15 years ago

I would have thought there are many other industries where it is just as possible for patents to work in this way, though I have no idea which, if any, do.

For example I could imagine car manufacturers all having a bunch of patents... just imagine. Nissan have a patent on controlling your car radio from buttons on the steering wheel. Ford have a patent for having the horn button on a stick that's connected to the wheel, while VW have a similar one for the horn button right on the wheel itself.. Could go on and on, and they could have great fun taking each other to court.

Some industries maybe aren't so open to pointless patents (maybe pharmaceuticals?), but in most I think you could do a hell of a lot. Maybe they already do the same, but we just don't hear about it. Maybe they could, but are wise enough not to bother. Maybe the patents system has just been in use for a longer time in those industries, so companies aren't allowed to get away with so much crap?

tick80• 15 years ago

In other industries, it can take years and millions/billions of investment before a product steps on someone's patent.

With software, you can design, build and sell a product overnight for virtually no cost and do the same.

buster• 15 years ago

Haha, exactly. Now, i have a new parable for discussions on this one.

yason• 15 years ago

it seems like cheating when you can simply buy creative ideas to engage in

This just underlines the futility of the patent system. Anyone who's patenting real things because they're creative and innovative is playing the old game. The new game is patent anything you can think of, do it a lot, and bet on the shotgun approach when the shit hits the fan.

When it comes to patents, when there's much hassle then most companies drop their charges/defenses and just settle. When there's too much hassle then many won't even sue.

The final outcome of this degeneration of patents is that companies just buy enough patents, any patents, in numbers to establish a premeditated interlock on mutual interests. It's primarily controlled by the amount of money available to be spent on defences.

In this sort of scheme patents would just become mere papers. The actual validity would remain at least far-fetched as today. If markets work as usual there might be actual patent manufacturing companies too, because it's obviously cheaper to buy mass-produced patents than invest both in patenting and actual R&D.

So you buy patents much like everybody buys insurance these days.

Eventually all decent companies will be too scared to point to each others' patent pools that it becomes a cold-war situation, with maybe some little legal battles between smaller companies.

Zarathust• 15 years ago

I just don't get how those amounts of patent help anything. Don't you just need the good ones? Every company seems to hoard them by number instead of picking them by validity.

"Ok fine, you can take my hyperlink-in-any-application patent but you've got to buy my 1000 other crappy patents about artificial-life-in-smarphone". Who's got to select the 1023 patents?

cynusx• 15 years ago

If I recall correctly, each patent lawsuit takes $1 mil to resolve. The goal is to inflict massive costs until the other one wants to negotiate a settlement.

acak• 15 years ago

The number of patents licensed = 1023 = 2^10 - 1.

Ofcourse, there can be doubt about their seriousness this time.

niels_olson• 15 years ago

Serious question: is this a piece of protest performance art?

michaelpinto• 15 years ago

My first assumption is that they did this to go after Apple, and then it dawned on me: Microsoft is actually going after hardware vendors for money -- so I wonder of this has something to do with that? http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/070511-microsoft-paten...

Google buys 1,000 patents from IBM to defend Android

Related Stories