Hacker News Reader

Comment by psbp | Hacker News Reader

We don't know what patents google is retaining, so it's unclear whether they're FRAND or truly valuable.

Also, I've followed Nilay's post on several of these patent issues; he's either wrong or he sensationalizes to fit his narrative. I don't think he's very credible, even with a J.D.

View on HN

We know the quality of the patents from what they've attempted to assert in courts in jurisdictions all over the world. They've not been successful anywhere.

Unless you want to make the leap that they've been holding back all their valuable IP from their patent assertions for some unknown reason, I think it's a pretty safe conclusion.

The extremely limited patent actions were pre-Google, and were largely contrived as negotiating tools. Trying to draw anything from that is foolhardy.

Why wouldn't they have used their strongest applicable patents? They may have more similar ones and maybe one or two will hold up but do you really think if they had some powerful non-FRAND ones they wouldn't have used them on Apple or Mircrosoft by now?

We didn't use nukes in Vietnam. The value of the Motorola's patents may be in keeping Apple and Microsoft from using their strongest patents.

I don't understand what the point of that would be. Patents only have a limited life and the stronger stronger and broader they are the more they strengthen you negotiating position. Of course there is uncertainty so you don't going in which will survive sufficiently but you don't deliberately pick anything but the best.

I just don't see the scenario were you can't do a licensing deal with your opponent but you agree to use you second rank patents in the lawsuit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com