September 15, 2011, 12:17 PM —
If patent battles are modern corporate warfare, Google just got more than a thousand reinforcements. After buying over a thousand patents from IBM back in July, Google bought another thousand in August.
Either 1023 or 1022 patents were involved (SEO by the Sea says one patent number is wrong). No matter the actual number, law firms everywhere must be drooling at the thought of more lawsuits and court hearings. Add this new pile to the 17,000 plus patents that Google acquired with the Motorola purchase, and I bet Google lawyers all have bulging briefcases.
Primary target? Apple, of course, with their lawsuits against Android phone makers like Samsung, HTC, and Motorola. But with all the money Google is spending on patents, wouldn't it be cheaper to pay a dollar or two per phone in royalties?
Fun watching
Wow, I’m really curious to see how the patent wars play out. Do you think Google will be more able to defend Android/Motorola more effectively with these particular patents? I’m sure Google’s IP lawyers are mulling the possibility of a counter-attack or two.
Joe Steinbeck on seobythesea.com
IBM must be laughing all the way to the bank. Well I guess the do no evil concept is out the window.
wizard69 on appleinsider.com
All these patents in the warchest are akin to stockpiling nuclear arms in preparation for the main event. Let's hope this isn't an "everybody loses" type of thing like a real war would be.
Michael D on endgadget.com
There are too many interesting patent titles to work out which one to look through first – but these look like good starting places:
Term-Statistics Modification For Category-Based Search
Session-History-Based Recency-Biased Natural Language Document Search
Method And System For Document Collection Final Search Result By Arithmetical
Operations Between Search Results Sorted By Multiple Ranking Metrics
Tom – AWE on seobythesea.com
Crazy Google
Would it not have been cheaper to pay a nominal fee to the original patent holders instead of all this nonsense?
kerryb on appleinsider.com
What’s the use of buying all these patents, companies end up selling anyway eventually? I wonder.
Mark on seobythesea.com
When patents attack. Google the new Intelectual Ventrues.
Steven N. on appleinsider.com
Patent reform, please
If we would stop using outdated laws we wouldn't be wasting money fighting each other; we'd be actually INNOVATING. Oh wait this is America where the little people get screwed so the big people can hoard all the money.
Terrence Smith on endgadget.com
It's getting bad this patent crap. Who needs to invent anymore when even invention itself is for sale.
Ireland on appleinsider.com
This is like the Cold War of electronics.
Skeet_Shooter on endgadget.com
Since politicians tend to be lawyers, and lawyers make many hundreds of dollars per hour working on patents and lawsuits, is there any hope for patent reform in our lifetime?
