

Motorola’s Value to Google Found in 18 Patents - jsherry
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-22/motorola-s-value-for-google-found-in-18-patents-used-against-apple-tech.html

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mathattack
Interesting. # of patents is a very misleading metric, in the same sense that
# of lines of code really doesn't tell you much about quality. My intuition on
the purchase is not that each patent is worth ~ 2/3 of a million dollars (~17K
patents, ~12bln purchase price - so the math is a little off) or even 1/4 of a
of a million dollar (divide by the premium paid that day ~5mm). I assumed that
there were a couple big ones hidden in there that had most of the value from a
grand strategic point of view. This isn't about nickel and diming everyone on
small things, it's about controlling a few of the big ones that will stand up
in court.

That said, I wasn't smart enough to figure out which subset were valuable on
my own. Thanks for sharing!

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nextparadigms
Before anyone goes on to say that of all the patents these are the only useful
ones, it's not really like that. First of all, the Courts won't accept many
more patent infringement claims than around that number. You can't go to Court
and claim patent infringement for 5000 patents. Oracle tried with a few
hundred and the judge forced them to drop most of them. This means they're
going to find as many that are some of the most useful ones.

Also, Apple claimed patent infringement on 20 patents against HTC, and they
only won with 2 very old ones, and I think they won a few hundred millions
with them. So it's good to keep that into perspective.

Even if Motorola loses in Court with about 20 of them in the first round, they
can try with another 20 in another lawsuit later. This is why Microsoft and
Apple will probably settle their patent disputes with Google. Google has too
many patents now, more than Microsoft even.

