

Google Sues Itself With Help From Intellectual Ventures - padrack
http://www.betabeat.com/2011/10/07/google-sues-itself-with-a-little-help-from-intellectual-ventures/

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nostrademons
If investing in a company = becoming that company for purposes of news
headlines, then virtually every financial firm has sued itself.

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dap
Agreed. Google is neither plaintiff nor defendant in this case. Not actually,
not effectively (they don't own a controlling stake in IV). I came here from
Slashdot to _escape_ sensational headlines and linkbait.

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yuhong
Yea, and it comes from the old FOSSPatents run by Florian, BTW.

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cperciva
_a company with no business model outside collecting patents_

Every time stories like this come up, there's a line like the above. And every
time, I wonder: Why is this relevant? I could say equally well that Stripe is
a company with no business model outside of taking money from credit cards; it
doesn't mean that they're bad people.

The fact is, companies out-source all the time; why is out-sourcing patent
infringement lawsuits any worse than out-sourcing credit card processing,
overdue account collections, or web design?

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elwin
The purported purpose of patents is to increase the amount of useful stuff
produced by the economy. The purpose of patent trolling is the opposite: the
product stops getting produced, and the amount of useful stuff decreases. That
makes patent trolling more harmful to consumers than normal patent lawsuits.

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tzs
Patent trolls generally seek royalties or one-time license fees, rather then
seeking to stop production. Patent owners seeking to shut down production are
generally patent owners who are trying to stop a competitor.

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gojomo
When the deal is complete, MMI will probably enjoy immunity under Google's
protection-racket-fees. So IV has to race to collect from not-paid-up MMI
before the deal closes.

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onwardly
Why couldn't Motorola just drag out the lawsuit then? Surely the pre-
proceedings and a trial would take longer than it will for the Google/Motorola
deal to go through.

