MIT Technology Review
Over the last few years, Google executives have had plenty to say about patents. According to Google, patents, particularly software patents, are mostly bogus, largely low-quality, and used in court by companies that can’t innovate to hurt consumers and stifle true innovators.
But data from the U.S. Patent & Trademark office shows that Google has been working very, very hard to win more patents on its own ideas. It has accelerated its activity to such a degree that Google inventors—among them founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page—are now winning 10 patents every day the patent office is open, covering everything from automated cars to balloon-based data networks. For comparison, consider that in all of 2003, Google was awarded four patents.
The recent deluge of patent documents offers fascinating insights into Google’s latest ideas (see “Is This Why Google Doesn’t Want You to Drive?”). It also demonstrates that Google is committed to having one of the world’s largest patent portfolios. The company is on pace to be awarded around 1,800 patents this year. That could be enough to vault Google, for the first time, onto the year’s list of top 10 patent recipients, ahead of industrial giants like General Electric and Intel.
Google urgently needs more patents to defend Android, its free operating system for mobile phones. Android is the most popular smartphone software; about 1.5 million Android phones are activated each day. But Google and handset makers like Samsung face increasing legal challenges. Just last month, they were sued in Texas for patent infringement by a company that represents Apple, Microsoft, and BlackBerry. One of the patents covered in the lawsuit was filed even before the search company was founded.
Publicly, Google continues to disparage patent claims, which it says amount to a tax on smartphones that raises prices for consumers. The company’s top lawyer, David Drummond, said in August that a typical smartphone could be covered by as many as 250,000 patents, but that, like most patents, they are “largely questionable” and for the most part “dubious.”
Nonetheless, filings show that Google started to realize as early as 2007 that it needed to play the patent game, and in a big way. That was the year Apple launched the iPhone, which came to market defended by a thicket of patents and trademarks on everything from the “home button” to the design of its rounded corners. Steve Jobs, stung by a $100 million loss in an intellectual property fight over the iPod a year before, had apparently made good on his vow “to patent it all.”
Read more
Over the last few years, Google executives have had plenty to say about patents. According to Google, patents, particularly software patents, are mostly bogus, largely low-quality, and used in court by companies that can’t innovate to hurt consumers and stifle true innovators.
But data from the U.S. Patent & Trademark office shows that Google has been working very, very hard to win more patents on its own ideas. It has accelerated its activity to such a degree that Google inventors—among them founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page—are now winning 10 patents every day the patent office is open, covering everything from automated cars to balloon-based data networks. For comparison, consider that in all of 2003, Google was awarded four patents.
The recent deluge of patent documents offers fascinating insights into Google’s latest ideas (see “Is This Why Google Doesn’t Want You to Drive?”). It also demonstrates that Google is committed to having one of the world’s largest patent portfolios. The company is on pace to be awarded around 1,800 patents this year. That could be enough to vault Google, for the first time, onto the year’s list of top 10 patent recipients, ahead of industrial giants like General Electric and Intel.
Google urgently needs more patents to defend Android, its free operating system for mobile phones. Android is the most popular smartphone software; about 1.5 million Android phones are activated each day. But Google and handset makers like Samsung face increasing legal challenges. Just last month, they were sued in Texas for patent infringement by a company that represents Apple, Microsoft, and BlackBerry. One of the patents covered in the lawsuit was filed even before the search company was founded.
Publicly, Google continues to disparage patent claims, which it says amount to a tax on smartphones that raises prices for consumers. The company’s top lawyer, David Drummond, said in August that a typical smartphone could be covered by as many as 250,000 patents, but that, like most patents, they are “largely questionable” and for the most part “dubious.”
Nonetheless, filings show that Google started to realize as early as 2007 that it needed to play the patent game, and in a big way. That was the year Apple launched the iPhone, which came to market defended by a thicket of patents and trademarks on everything from the “home button” to the design of its rounded corners. Steve Jobs, stung by a $100 million loss in an intellectual property fight over the iPod a year before, had apparently made good on his vow “to patent it all.”
Read more
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