There seems to be more news in the smartphone industry about patents and lawsuits than there is about phones now a days. Companies are putting up their barricades in an attempt to prevent the patent trolls to come knocking. Despite Google’s public stance against the practice of buying companies to attack others, it appears as if the company has realized that in order to survive in the technology world it will have to spend a lot of money in acquiring patents as well. Hopefully Google stays true to its word and uses the IP as a defense-only device and/or for innovated reason rather than trying to win cheap lawsuits against smaller companies. So what now? Boy, when Google wants to do something it gets it done.
For those of you who aren’t aware, I’m not a big fan of Apple’s patent trolling new ways. Google doesn’t seem to be either. In an attempt to prevent Google from buying Nortel’s 6,000 something size IP portfolio, Apple, Microsoft and a few others ganged up in polling together to outbid Google. Google’s own Kent Walker lashed out after the Nortel bid about the sudden rise patent trolling.
“We buy companies all the time—for both people and interesting technologies. This would have been north of $4 billion for none of those things. We were bidding on the right to stop people from innovating,”
While I don’t necessarily think that patents prevent innovation (in theory, they should aid them), I do find the current patent system horribly flawed. I’m not qualified to say what should be done to fix it, but the current “buy the small companies to sue the big” is having a series negative impact on innovation. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a small company to enter into software now a days? There are so many general patents that they have to try and step around in hopes that a larger company won’t try to sue them for what they did invent on their own. It’s like trying to teach yourself a sport on minefield and expecting to be able to compete with professionals. Regardless of what your opinions are on the patent system, the patent wars are in full swing.
After failing to acquire Nortel, Google did no sit tidily licking their wounds. According to pcmag, Google has secured 1,030 patents from IBM. They offered a few of them for the world to see and they appear to be mostly search engine and software patents. Nice things to have when that’s the meat of your business. There are a few other patents that have a few people wondering whether or not that Google might be looking to do some new things as well (innovation. Crazy, right?). This nearly doubles the search giant’s tiny IP portfolio. This of course comes right after the announcement that Google was also looking to acquire patents from InterDigital. Google doesn’t like watching its OS be picked apart by Apple, and they seem to be readying the troops to defend against an all out attack.
Between all of this and the Oracle lawsuit, you have to wonder whether or not Google knew what it was getting into when it decided to enter the mobile world.