
Google Makes $900 Million Stalking-Horse Bid For Nortel Patents - ankimal
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/04/google-makes-900-million-stalking-horse-bid-for-nortel-patents/
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roc
I wonder whether Google's support for Patent Reform will follow a similar
course as their support for Net Neutrality.

That is: will it get dropped the moment they secure a deal that puts them on
the other side of the fence.

I mean, that's what this really is: Google attempting to sweeten their patent
portfolio so they can land cross-licensing agreements with the other tech
giants. If successful, their self-interest would be to maintain the patent
system.

And I can't say I'm optimistic they'll stick to their currently-stated
principles once those run counter to their self-interest.

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CountSessine
I posted a little while ago that Google has very few patents of it's own -
only about 600 that I can find. Apple has about 3700, Microsoft about 17000.
HTC has next to none.

Now Google wants to spend a billion dollars to buy 6000 Nortel patents. I
guess Google learned that you don't bring smart employees, a sane corporate
culture, genuine innovation, and a good reputation among your customers to a
patent fight.

Another interesting angle to this whole patent auction going on here in
canuckistan is going to be Google vs. Huawei. Both of these companies are in
the telecom sector, both of them have a metric ton of money (although maybe
Huawei has the advantage here - theirs is pretty much guaranteed by the
Chinese treasury, in spite of whatever ridiculous claims of independence
they've made), both of them are competing with established players with huge
patent portfolios, but neither of them have many patents themselves. Huawei
has already made it known that they want those patents too. We'll see how this
turns out.

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DanielRibeiro
It is coming: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/07/the-coming-
software...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/07/the-coming-software-
patent-apocalypse.html)

