

Google Offers to Give Away Patents to Startups in Its Push Against Patent Trolls - falcor84
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/23/google-offers-to-sell-patents-to-startups-to-boost-its-wider-cross-licensing-initiative/

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aaronvonbaron
I am starting to believe that large, established, companies with large market
share and large patent portfolios have little use for 95% of their patent
portfolio. First, many patents are either weak or outdated by the time they
issue. Maybe the company has changed directions from the time the patent
application was filed. Or, there also might be a "file first and ask questions
later policy" for many companies, so that valuable inventions are captured
along with the junk patents, a bycatch of sorts. Then, the company can enhance
their reputation in some communities by giving away patent rights. Second, the
purpose of patents is to exclude others from making your invention for a
period of time in exchange for teaching the invention to the public. This can
be useful for smaller players, including individual inventors, who do not have
a large market share and comparatively little money. Larger companies do not
have as much need to exclude competition through use of IP, because they have
already excluded competition in the market. Although, there are still the
clash of the titans, such as Apple and Samsung.

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sidcool
Great move!

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Houshalter
Google is a patent troll: [http://www.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial-
intelligenc...](http://www.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial-
intelligence/8765-google-files-ai-patents.html)

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robbrit
Searching around in the news, it seems like the only time Google uses patents
offensively is when fighting against patent trolls:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-21458094](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-21458094)

[http://www.siliconbeat.com/2013/12/26/google-sues-apple-
back...](http://www.siliconbeat.com/2013/12/26/google-sues-apple-backed-
rockstar-over-patents/)

This doesn't seem to fit with the definition of a patent troll to me:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll)

