“Google Inc., facing a growing threat of intellectual-property lawsuits, acquired a batch of patents this month from International Business Machines Corp. to bolster its portfolio,” Devin Banerjee and Brian Womack report for Bloomberg.
“The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on July 11 and 12 recorded more than 1,000 patents assigned to Mountain View, California-based Google by IBM,” Banerjee and Womack report. “They cover a range of topics, including microprocessing chips, regional databases and memory fabrication and architecture, said Bill Slawski, president of SEO by the Sea Inc., a Warrenton, Virginia-based research firm specializing in search-engine optimization.”
Banerjee and Womack report, “Google’s Android mobile-operating system has been targeted in at least six legal complaints, increasing its need for intellectual property to defend the company against litigation.”
“Google, the world’s largest Internet search company, aims to curb abuses of the patent system. It’s calling on Congress and the Federal Trade Commission to rein in lawsuits, and asking the Patent and Trademark Office to take closer looks at patents being used in litigation,” Banerjee and Womack report. “Google’s rivals have said the company is critical of the patent system because it has few patents of its own and entered a smartphone market where companies had been researching and selling products for years before Android phones went on sale in 2008.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
In wake of Nortel patent auction loss, Google general counsel calls for patent reform – July 26, 2011
Google’s Schmidt: Apple not responding with innovation, they’re responding with lawsuits – July 19, 2011
Google’s Schmidt worried and disappointed over Apple consortium’s Nortel patent win – July 8, 2011
Is it the same 1000 patents that were widely reported several weeks ago? I guess yes. Anything new discovered in this case?
Well, it looks like Google has been using “Google Patents” to search. All that patent searching to keep informed on Apples Top Secret Skunk Works. That Eric the Mole is out of Apple’s board and barred from the city, this is all they have.
Not looking forward to the day Google falls on it’s face. Well, more like will be relishing it.
This article is from July.
Patents are the best thing money can buy now. You don’t have to be an intellectual to own intellectual properties. Just buy them. I think that’s a bit weird, because once Google bought an IP, all of a sudden it became a Retarded Property.
Google said all this patent purchasing of late was stifling innovation. Clearly it’s stifling the oxygen to their brains too.
In today’s news:
Apple granted more patents to produce exciting new products.
Google purchases more patents to defend copying others’ exciting new products.
Money Can’t Buy You Love, Goog.
If the car industry did what the phone/pc/Internet is doing now suing each other they would be fighting over who had the first round wheels, steering wheel , brakes. , lights seats , radios , we wouldn’t have the choice and compertion we have with the car industry world wide, for get suing each other and put your heads down and just think of the next big thing, function the man in the hight streets wants and needs or dosnt no he needs until it on the Market ( iPad )
That analogy was bullshit the first time you posted it. Did you expect a different response this time? That’s the first sign of being batshit crazy.
Please explain. Without the bad language. The analogy seems correct to me!
The wheel was invented more than 20 years before the internal combustion engine. The analogy is false on the face of it.
The people who think that these lawsuits are over trivial things are people who don’t understand the basics of patents.
Apple invented touch interfaces, just as they invented the gui. This time, though, they patented it.
The patent system exists for a reason, and google is abusing it and trying to get away with it.
The car analogy would be, if chrystelr had broken in and stolen henry fords entire plant.
The wheel was invented a loooong time before the ICE.
How often has styling been copied by car manufacturers etc
I don’t say that patents shouldn’t count, but some things are ridiculous Patents need to be something that was really an original idea ( not because it,s a square shape with Crome around it, that’s not an original idea, just a variation on a theme) and that idea needs to be proved properly.
“styling” is Trade Dress. And if Ford came out with a car that looked quite like a model of BMW you can bet they’d be hauling them into court. And only a few of the suits involve Trade Dress.
Actually the GUI was one Apple bought. It was invented by Xerox PARC.
Patent troll rising.
I hope Google’s got it in their head that buying up and stockpiling technology patents is an effective strategy against Apple.
Apple didn’t go shopping for its IP; it eats what it kills, so to speak. Down the road, when Google appears in court to countersue Apple (and rest assured, Apple *will* be coming after Android) with patents acquired from other parties, do they think the fact that thousands of these aren’t theirs, are ten years and older and haven’t been used against Apple won’t be an issue?
“Like many tech companies, at times we’ll acquire patents that are relevant to our business,” Google said.
Doesn’t say what sort of quid pro quo Google granted IBM. We know they paid billions for Motorola’s IP. All this for something they give away for free. Research tells us android users are not a valuable market segment, so are their extra search hits worth all this acquisition? Is this a business?
Google is buying thousands of patents so it can continue to steal everyone’s patents and blackmail their victims to stop suing them.
The new tech scum.
You don’t buy patents for defense, you buy patents to counter sue and negotiate a deal to share. In other words, Google knows they’re infringing and wants leverage to negotiate at the big boy table with Apple.
There should be a LAW about buying patents and the time IN WHICH those newly purchased properties come into EFFECT.
Clearly MONEY is being spent and in order to save GOOGLE.
Meanwhile Microsoft is charging a fee to the ANDROID handset makers – this is making a mockery of USA Patents Laws. How can one BUY patents and give them away later or the NEXT DAY and be validated – complete crap.
The thieves are on the run and might get away with this… is it not so obvious. Seems like Window vs Mactintosh all over again – stolen IP.
Oh and Microsoft afterwards will just buy out Google once they are so crippled anyways. Yahoo to AOL… then to Microsoft also. Ridiculous!
Don’t confuse/confound law, morality, and ethics. They are three separate entities.
With law being the one most distant from the other.
hey – what Curley said!!!
Nortel was done – the company wiped out – so where do the sales of 6.5 Billion go to – the employees who lost there jobs – or to a company that apparently NO LONGER EXISTS?
IF a Corporation is to be its own identity and responsible to its self – then when that company dies – as DOES ANY individual – the money left in the bank without a WILL goes to the GOVERNMENT. The deceased is nothing more then remembered so WHY are the IP of a dead company still valued and fro sale? CRAZY!
All interesting but I must stop my wondering fingers now!
Wrong.
Patents are assets of a bankrupt company, just like property and equipment. A bankrupt company has debts; their assets are sold to help pay their debts.
This is what happened with the Nortel patents.
“oogle, the world’s largest Internet search company, aims to curb abuses of the patent system.”
That’s so rich.
Google is BUYING thousands and thousands of patents from other companies to sue Apple, who simply PATENTED THEIR OWN INVENTIONS.
Who’s doing the abusing???
I wonder if anyone at Google has possibly considered that it might just be cheaper in the long run to license the damn patents rather than buy brazillians of $s worth and pay the legal sharks all their fees…
I wonder how many of the IBM patents are “dubious”?
I’m wondering how old they are. Somehow I doubt IBM is selling their latest patents. So the benefits they may offer Google may be fleeting.
If those patents had a lot of value, then would IBM sell them? More specifically, if those patents has a lot of value against Apple, then wouldn’t IBM either leverage them itself, or bring Apple into a potential bidding war to make more money off of them?
IBM has tens of thousands of patents, and my guess is that the 1000 patents in question were not among the best. And why “1000”? Just to sound impressive? Why not 15 good ones? It all smacks of deep desperation.