Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents | Hacker News Reader

Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents

blogs.forbes.com

126 pointsyanw25 comments

Here's an idea I had the other day, which may be crazy or old news:

Google should start a patent pool with all of their patents. Every company would be granted full license to use these patents, as long as they commit not to sue anyone else (in or out of the pool) for patent infringement. Ideally, they would commit their own patents to the pool as well.

With enough buy-in, this could effectively null out software patents without any legislative change, at least among non-trolls, since with a large enough pool it would be almost guaranteed that a company would violate more patents in the pool than vice-versa.

Ideally, this pool would be managed by a non-profit institution, patents would be committed irrevocably, and the organization would have lawyers to actually sue any other company that filed a patent lawsuit. This may be similar to what's been done for WebM etc., but it seems like the same idea on this much larger scale could be much more powerful.

Main challenges I could see are (1) patent trolls, since there's nothing to sue them for, and (2) who decides what's a software patent -- not sure how clear-cut of a line this is.

That's basically what the Open Innovation Network is:

http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/about.php

Thanks, that is definitely related (and admirable). But, in my scheme the proposed pool would sue anyone who sues for software patent infringement, regardless of whether the original suit has anything to do with patents in the pool. To receive this coverage, the target of the suit might be required to donate their own patents to the pool first. This could create a positive feedback loop, to quickly grow the patent pool to the size necessary to have broad influence.

Presumably with the exception of counter-suing companies that have sued you? Companies build patent portfolios so that other companies will be wary of suing them for fear of being counter-sued (simplification). If being a member of this pool removed your ability to even act defensively, I don't think it would achieve its goals.

I understood it as the company or the pool could counter-sue with the entire pool rather then just the portfolio originally owned by the company.

Exactly. Joining the pool effectively signs away your rights to make offensive lawsuits, in exchange for gaining the rights of the entire pool for defensive purposes.

Patent Trolls do not make or sell any products so it would not be possible to counter sue them.

You're right about patent trolls, but this would allow those companies to have access to a vast amount of patents, so it should become harder for patent trolls to sue any of them, although far from impossible.

But the patent pool would be mostly so those companies don't sue each other. So many companies in the tech industry are suing each other right now. It's ridiculous.

Having access to a large patent pool provides zero protection against NPEs ("patent trolls").

That wouldn't defend them against the pure patent troll businesses without products or research. Also, what would happen with the small open source developers if there's such a stash of legal power concentrated by their competitors. It can turn very bad.

Patent trolls: I don't have a good answer, other than (1) nobody would be worse off than before in this regard, and (2) once the only lawsuits are from patent trolls, it may be much easier to enact legal change. (Members of the pool will be incentivized to lobby for patent reform, rather than preserving the status quo).

Small developers: They just join the pool, or don't join and just don't sue anyone. Members in the pool would irrevocably sign away their rights to offensive lawsuits, so how could it turn bad? In other words, the "stash of legal power" is not concentrated by "competitors", but by "we, the people".

The problem is that Google's patent pool is relatively insignificant (in terms of size, not necessarily scientific merit) compared to some other, much older companies...

Brilliant idea. And probably wildly hard to get companies that have invested $100s of Billion in their patent portfolio to agree to.

If Google became the champion of the abolishing patents movement, I think they'd get a lot of support from companies that prefer to remain silent on the issue right now.

Google has 740 or so patents so far.

It would be great for them to dissolve their rights to Patent No. 6,529,903 (page rank)

or 7,136,875 (adwords)

or 7,158,878 (Google Earth)

but they won't.

Apple has over 4000 patents listed (my favorite is 4,136,359, Microcomputer with timing based display, by Woz).

Facebook, 11.

Not sure what is pending on the FB front though but surely a lot.

Point being: unilateral or nothing. Lawyer to lawyer wars of words, however public are tedious.

Google just bought another 1000 from IBM, and I heard they have about 1600 more that they have filed for. Also they might buy a few more soon, related to mobile technology.

The patent law should change to, if the company goes under or after so many years the patent is no longer valid. Once the patent is no longer valid it can not be re patented ever again. This way companies can't keep using there old patents to hold inovation hostage.

Is that not what they did back in april [1] or march 2009 [2]? I'm surprised by the implication that Google hasn't publicly opposed software patents.

"It's for these reasons that Google has long argued in favor of real patent reform, which we believe will benefit users and the U.S. economy as a whole."

[1] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/patents-and-innovatio...

[2] http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/03/patent-reform...

No, they opposed "low-quality software patents," which is a goal, not a reform proposal.

They cited the "explosion in patent litigation, often involving low-quality software patents" as one of the reasons why they argue "in favor of real patent reform".

Those are all worthwhile sentiments, but they're not the same as "we're opposed to patents on software."

> We’re also looking at other ways to reduce the anti-competitive threats against Android by strengthening our own patent portfolio.

And this is why they will _not_ oppose patents.

By Lee saying that "Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents," he is trying to box Google into a precarious position because one of Google's original patents -- PageRank -- is one of its key differentiators, and he knows Google is never going to "oppose" patents or give that up.

I'm pretty sure the other major search engines also use PageRank.

"even if 90 percent of them are "bogus" (which they probably are)"

Don't make me send this to unnecessaryquotes.com

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