Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents
blogs.forbes.com
Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents
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Re: Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents
#2If 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.
Re: Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents
#3Is 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...
Re: Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents
#4Is 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/…
No, they opposed "low-quality software patents," which is a goal, not a reform proposal.
Re: Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents
#5Is 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/…
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".
Re: Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
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."
Re: Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents
#7Here'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.
Re: Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents
#8"even if 90 percent of them are "bogus" (which they probably are)"
Don't make me send this to unnecessaryquotes.com
Re: Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents
#9Here'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 pat…
Brilliant idea. And probably wildly hard to get companies that have invested $100s of Billion in their patent portfolio to agree to.
Re: Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents
#10Here'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 pat…
That's basically what the Open Innovation Network is: