

Microsoft comes to Facebook's aid with 550 patents - bproper
http://allthingsd.com/20120423/microsoft-and-facebook-to-announce-550-million-patent-deal/

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larrik
Title is wrong. It's Facebook paying Microsoft $550 million for about 650
patents (former AOL patents).

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rollypolly
I've always wondering how large companies buy and sell patents in bulk like
that. Do they just point at a filing cabinet and say, there's 650 patents in
there, it's yours for 550M$, take it or leave it. Or do they have an army of
lawyers pour over them one by one?

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eblume
It's a bit of both. I don't work in legal but I see them going at it from time
to time when patent stuff comes up. There is definitely 'the filing cabinet'
(more like a room) and it contains one of several copies of the important
documents - but the lawyers are the interface to those documents.

Sometimes I can't help but feel that _most_ lawyers do not much more than
present an obfuscation layer around standard forms.

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rollypolly

      Sometimes I can't help but feel that most lawyers do not
      much more than present an obfuscation layer around
      standard forms.
    

I bet non-technical people also have that feeling about engineers.

"It took you a second to change the behavior of this. You're obviously not
working very hard." ..when in reality, it took a lot of effort to make a
system flexible enough to adapt its behavior quickly to changes in
requirements.

...but I'm getting off topic now. :)

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eblume
No, it's a great point, and one well taken.

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soupboy
Makes one think if Microsoft was acting as an intermediary for Facebook all
along, maybe because AOL wouldn't sell the patents to a competitor?

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ajross
$550M in cash this week for a patent portfolio. $300M last week for Instagram
(edit: typo). This has been a very expensive few days for what is still a
private company. How much cash does Facebook have?

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soupboy
It is Intagram, not Infogram. And the purchase price was $1B, not $300M.
Facebook's trailing 12M revenue was a billion dollars, so it's not as if they
have cash problems.

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ajross
It was a billion in nominal value, but most of that was Facebook stock (at a
valuation of $75B, thus all the stories last week about whether the IPO would
cover that or not).

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geetee
The paper trail of ownership and licensing for these things must be pretty
obnoxious.

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latchkey
Instead of just working out a licensing deal on Yahoo's 10 claimed infringing
patents, Facebook spends $550 million to buy 650 aol/m$ patents. I bet FB's
board was involved with this decision.

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jimmyvanhalen
it's a pre-emptive strike to anyone who's thinking about suing Facebook.

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rbanffy
Or a weapon to sue anyone who dares to threaten Facebook.

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ldayley
While Microsoft is making a tidy profit from these patents, keep in mind that
they have a +- 3% stake in Facebook. I'm sure they would love these Yahoo!
lawsuits to go favorably for Facebook.

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freehunter
Then again, Yahoo search is powered by Bing. Microsoft has a stake in both
aspects of the fight. I expect they'll be playing mediator, doing their best
to make sure no one loses.

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johnohara
Strictly from a cash perspective, that's just shy of 4 million copies of
Windows 7 Professional OEM.

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wavephorm
I think we are about to witness a Software Patent World War unfold in MAD-
style (mutually assured destruction). The software patent laws have trapped
everyone into corners from which it is no longer possible to innovate without
trampling on someone else's intellectual property. The absurdity of our
litigious bureaucracy is going to de-evolve into madness that will make patent
lawyers every where squeal with joy and the make the lives of technology
workers everywhere suck.

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rbanffy
The analogy fails because, in MAD, the unthinkable scenario happens quickly
and there is no turning back once the process starts - effectively preventing
it from starting - while in the lawsuit-standoff-from-hell it is a very long
and expensive process with plenty of opportunities to abort and negotiate a
deal.

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wavephorm
This is from 2010, and the landscape has become quite a bit worse since then:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/oct/04/microsoft-m...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/oct/04/microsoft-
motorola-android-patent-lawsuit)

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rbanffy
Still, the MAD doctrine won't prevent this war. The damage is spread across
periods too long to effectively prevent lawsuits. Or innovation. It will just
raise entry barriers and prevent small players from entering the market (or
impose additional costs when they become large enough).

