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Comment by pacaro | Hacker News Reader

"Litigation that attacks open-source products limits consumer choice, hurts the economy, and discourages innovation."

I find this interesting, in a world where software patents exist this seems tantamount to saying "software patents ought not to apply to open-source products", does Google really mean this to be read as "[Patent] litigation ... limits consumer choice, hurts the economy, and discourages innovation", if so, given that they are in a better position to influence legislators than I am, what pro-active steps are they taking to change the status of software patents? Or do they really mean "we don't like it when Apple uses patents against us"?

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Breaking: company that copied other company's invention in favor of less stringent copying rules.

Do people really want someone with Google's revenue stream and internal R&D getting into the aggressive patent game?

I don't "want" anything, Google should choose and do what they want. I'm just observing that Google is a company with few patents and are in competition in multiple areas with companies with more patents that they very possibly infringe on. It is therefore no surprise that their view on patent law is incredibly in line with this position.

I believe there's a trend in tech circles to conflate "patents badly need some reforms" with much stronger views along the lines of "patents are pure evil". This is just rubbish. The alternative to patents is massive secrecy on a ridiculous scale.

" I'm just observing that Google is a company with few patents and are in competition in multiple areas with companies with more patents that they very possibly infringe on. It is therefore no surprise that their view on patent law is incredibly in line with this position."

It's a given that you can't enter a field without infringing on patents. Therefore the choice is to either not to grow or to infringe on others patents. Every company has to make that choice not just Google. In the current system the best thing Google could do to defend itself would be aggressively patent everything to use as a weapon. For some reason they have chosen not to do that and that hamstrings them.

That gets dangerously close to "patents are pure evil". When a company that chooses not to abuse a government provided weapon is at a major disadvantage and other companies can use the government to damage it.

Yes, "software patents ought not to apply to open-source products", because "software patents" ought not to exist.

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