One point Florian Mueller makes regularly at FOSSpatents is that Google is disadvantaged in patent fights because it's outgunned.
Its rivals have a lot of patents with which to negotiate legal settlements while Google's portfolio is small.
Events of this month show that Google has heard the criticism and is responding.
- Google said early this month that it would buy Nortel's patent portfolio for $900 million. The figure could rise if another bidder emerges, but the point is these patents, while irrelevant to Google in and of themselves, act as legal ammunition against other large companies and against patent trolls.
- Google said yesterday it would buy the patents of a bankrupt Israeli device maker, Modu, for $2 million. Google is explicitly stating now that it is buying these patents to protect itself from others' patent suits.
- Google has formed its own patent consortium to protect its open source WebM video codec from the MPEG-LA patent consortium that wants to take it down in court. It's a corporate version of the Open Invention Network that tries to protect Linux (but which has been silent over attacks on Android, Google's Linux distro).
This is a short-form version of the turn Microsoft made in Burning the Ships.
Readers will recall that Microsoft tried to protect itself in the 1990s through agreements with business partners not to sue, but switched in the last decade to a policy of acquiring lots of patents and then signing cross-licenses that would let it get into other businesses royalty-free. Google didn't have time to invent its way out of trouble — the lawsuits were coming too thick-and-fast — but by buying patents it hopes to get similar protection.
As public policy, this sucks.
This guarantees old, dead, non-innovating companies revenue from any smart start-up, and acts as a tax against innovation. It's kind of like the copyright protection the Three Stooges enjoy. They're not making any more movies, they all rest in peace, and the "property right" only helps lazy heirs and lawyers who buy copyrights so they can sit on their asses and clip coupons off others' innovations.
As a practical business matter, on the other hand, it makes perfect sense. Corporations have to live in the real world. They can't let their ideals blind them to the reality of the legal environment. The bigger they get, the bigger the target they make, the more true this becomes, and Google has gotten real big real fast.
