

Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents - yanw
http://blogs.forbes.com/timothylee/2011/08/03/google-should-publicly-oppose-software-patents/

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w01fe
Here's an idea I had the other day, which may be crazy or old news:

Google should start a patent pool with all of their patents. Every company
would be granted full license to use these patents, as long as they commit not
to sue anyone else (in or out of the pool) for patent infringement. Ideally,
they would commit their own patents to the pool as well.

With enough buy-in, this could effectively null out software patents without
any legislative change, at least among non-trolls, since with a large enough
pool it would be almost guaranteed that a company would violate more patents
in the pool than vice-versa.

Ideally, this pool would be managed by a non-profit institution, patents would
be committed irrevocably, and the organization would have lawyers to actually
sue any other company that filed a patent lawsuit. This may be similar to
what's been done for WebM etc., but it seems like the same idea on this much
larger scale could be much more powerful.

Main challenges I could see are (1) patent trolls, since there's nothing to
sue them for, and (2) who decides what's a software patent -- not sure how
clear-cut of a line this is.

~~~
alecco
That wouldn't defend them against the pure patent troll businesses without
products or research. Also, what would happen with the small open source
developers if there's such a stash of legal power concentrated by their
competitors. It can turn very bad.

~~~
w01fe
Patent trolls: I don't have a good answer, other than (1) nobody would be
worse off than before in this regard, and (2) once the only lawsuits are from
patent trolls, it may be much easier to enact legal change. (Members of the
pool will be incentivized to lobby for patent reform, rather than preserving
the status quo).

Small developers: They just join the pool, or don't join and just don't sue
anyone. Members in the pool would irrevocably sign away their rights to
offensive lawsuits, so how could it turn bad? In other words, the "stash of
legal power" is not concentrated by "competitors", but by "we, the people".

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nextparadigms
If Google became the champion of the abolishing patents movement, I think
they'd get a lot of support from companies that prefer to remain silent on the
issue right now.

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ethank
Google has 740 or so patents so far.

It would be great for them to dissolve their rights to Patent No. 6,529,903
(page rank)

or 7,136,875 (adwords)

or 7,158,878 (Google Earth)

but they won't.

Apple has over 4000 patents listed (my favorite is 4,136,359, Microcomputer
with timing based display, by Woz).

Facebook, 11.

Not sure what is pending on the FB front though but surely a lot.

Point being: unilateral or nothing. Lawyer to lawyer wars of words, however
public are tedious.

~~~
nextparadigms
Google just bought another 1000 from IBM, and I heard they have about 1600
more that they have filed for. Also they might buy a few more soon, related to
mobile technology.

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WoundedMarlin
The patent law should change to, if the company goes under or after so many
years the patent is no longer valid. Once the patent is no longer valid it can
not be re patented ever again. This way companies can't keep using there old
patents to hold inovation hostage.

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murz
Is that not what they did back in april [1] or march 2009 [2]? I'm surprised
by the implication that Google hasn't publicly opposed software patents.

"It's for these reasons that Google has long argued in favor of real patent
reform, which we believe will benefit users and the U.S. economy as a whole."

[1] [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/patents-and-
innovatio...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/patents-and-
innovation.html)

[2] [http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/03/patent-
reform...](http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/03/patent-reform-
needed-more-than-ever.html)

~~~
binarybits
No, they opposed "low-quality software patents," which is a goal, not a reform
proposal.

~~~
murz
They cited the "explosion in patent litigation, often involving low-quality
software patents" as one of the reasons why they argue "in favor of real
patent reform".

~~~
binarybits
Those are all worthwhile sentiments, but they're not the same as "we're
opposed to patents on software."

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doctoboggan
> We’re also looking at other ways to reduce the anti-competitive threats
> against Android by strengthening our own patent portfolio.

And this is why they will _not_ oppose patents.

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espeed
By Lee saying that "Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents," he is
trying to box Google into a precarious position because one of Google's
original patents -- PageRank -- is one of its key differentiators, and he
knows Google is never going to "oppose" patents or give that up.

~~~
kragen
I'm pretty sure the other major search engines also use PageRank.

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steve_b
"even if 90 percent of them are "bogus" (which they probably are)"

Don't make me send this to unnecessaryquotes.com

