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Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

arstechnica.com

21–30 of 193 posts

Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#22
post #8

1.36% of AdWords Revenue? That is a lot of money. I don't see how they are entitled to that amount in any way.

Also, why an ongoing 1.36% cut? What's the significance of that number? Might as well peel back the layers on this farce.

Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#23

The Microsoft settlement for the same was interesting: "Vringo also sued Microsoft over ads in its Bing search engine. Microsoft settled that case in May, agreeing to pay $1 million plus 5 percent of whatever Google ultimately pays." It's strange agreeing to pay 5% of Google outcome on the same and quite clever the more I consider the pros/cons.

They're arming patent trolls and aiming them at google. This isn't the first one (rockstar).

Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#24
post #13
post #10

> US-based revenue from AdWords, Google's flagship program Given Google's structure and revenue recognition, I'd be surprised if they had to pay out anything significant.

Google's corporate structure is designed to hide and move profit, not revenue. If this ruling is upheld we're talking a super-massive quantity of money going to someone who did nothing. And the patent system will still not get reformed.

It's also not even designed to hide or move US profit, so it's doubly irrelevant. Double Irish Dutch Sandwiches don't do anything for money made in the US.

Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#25
Good.

There are few things which can effect change better than billionaires in fear of losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year. When it happens to small fry you lament because they can't do anything to change and end up settling to save themselves or losing and losing everything. When it happens to the 55th largest company you rejoice because they have the power and motivation to change the rules.

Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#27

Just hundreds of millions? Is that only going forward or is it retroactive? If it's the latter, I'd expect that number to be much, much higher.

It's only retroactive back to 2012 and the patent expires in 2016.

Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#28
post #23

The Microsoft settlement for the same was interesting: "Vringo also sued Microsoft over ads in its Bing search engine. Microsoft settled that case in May, agreeing to pay $1 million plus 5 percent of whatever Google ultimately pays." It's strange agreeing to pay 5% of Google outcome on the same and quite clever the more I consider the pros/cons.

They're arming patent trolls and aiming them at google. This isn't the first one (rockstar).

Or perhaps they realized there's no point in wasting money on patent lawyers and just relied on Google's defense lawyers. 5% of nothing is nothing.

Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#29

Article makes no mention of the validity of the patent. Does the court not take that into question?

I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand it, the validity of a patent, and the infringement case, are handled by separate courts, each on its own schedule. You can get an infringement judgement against you for a patent that is ultimately invalidated, and the judgement still stands.

Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#30
So called "intellectual property" is an other way to decrease the value of manual work and increase the income of pure "possessions".

By making creative work "property" that can be owned and making minimal creative acts "possessable" in a way, that other creativity is inhibited or at least "billed", actual work is diminished for pure "property" holding.

The only way, non-possessing people can climb up "from rags to riches" is by their work. But working is less and less valued in this system.

And with the patent system, the true inventors are getting very limited money (in big companies, it is most often just a fixed amount per patent) -- the rest of the value goes to lawyers, the companies investors and the buyers of the patents when the company goes bankrupt or looses interest. Thus creating a system, where part of the mobile phone or the software or whatever gadgets price must pay the royalties for the patent owner (not the inventor!). Thus this amount goes away from the money that can be paid to workers and inventors. The whole system improves income generated by possessions, but reduces income possibilities for workers and creative people.

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