“As a proxy war rages over Android in courtrooms around the world, Apple and Google are racing to stockpile key intellectual property in a bid to stave off a legal extinction event, with Google in particular seeing its patent filings surge last year,” Shane Cole reports for AppleInsider.
“Mountain View, Calif.-based Google has been particularly aggressive in its drive to collect intellectual property,” Cole reports. “The 3,042 patents awarded to the search giant in the last two years represent three quarters of Google’s entire war chest of just over 4,000 patents, and patent applications from the company have more than doubled in the last three years.”
“Apple, meanwhile, has seen its patent assignments increase from 807 in 2011 to 1,953 in 2013,” Cole reports. “The Cupertino, Calif.-based company — with a 22-year head start on Google — also maintains a larger overall arsenal than its rival, with 7,723 patents to its name, some of which cover foundational concepts in personal computing.”
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