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

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

#101

Post by TeMPOraL »

andrewfong wrote: post #95
eru wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree. Though, you'd get some interesting reverse engineering related problems. Ie look at the patent, come up with a problem that would make this patent obvious, lock some engineers in a sealed room with the problem, and wait for something like the patent to fall out. Was that independent invention, then?

Probably not, although you could write the rules in a way that avoids this I think -- e.g. the knowledge of the person who looks at the patent is imparted to the engineers because they're all part of the same organization.

You could probably work around this by e.g. introducing enough layers of separation between engineers and the person who read the patent/formulated the problem. It would be an interesting form of... knowledge laundering? ;).

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

#102

Post by 1stop »

tanzam75 wrote: post #87
pavanky wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I don't see how it is a Win for MS when their ad revenue is ~3% that of Google. In a sense, aren't they paying more ?

> Well I don't see how it is a Win for MS when their ad revenue is ~3% that of Google. In a sense, aren't they paying more ? How do you figure? Microsoft earned $3.2 billion in the Online Services division in fiscal year 2013. According to Microsoft's annual report, advertising accounted for "nearly all of" that division's revenues. $3.2 billion is about 5.6% of Google's trailing 12 months revenues of $57 billion. Su…

But if google grows it's share... microsoft pays more.

... Actually, could google buy vringo, then just get money off MS?

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

#103

Post by 1stop »

victorhooi wrote: post #75
doktrin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come now. Patent trolls are a massive nuisance, but they don't represent an existential threat to this country - let alone all of human civilization.

Lol, it's probably hyperbole. But think about it - what exactly does American produce these days? Yes, they still have a heavy manufacturing base - but that's declining and fast. If you stifle innovation, you've basically shot yourself in the foot.

Hollywood, Wall St, Apple, Boeing... Yeah the US doesn't produce anything... they just make up that 15 trillion dollars of GDP (double what the next biggest economy makes - China).

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

#104

Post by zaroth »

The money is going to the guy who patented a crucial part of Google's AdWords algorithm which neither they nor Bing can apparently design around.

The guy got crushed in the market, being just a little fish, he was gobbled right up. But he bought back his patent, and took the fight to Google and Bing and won.

You can argue the percentage calculation is a too rich by an order of magnitude or two (and I think it is), but you can't argue whether the patent is valid or whether they infringe. A judge and jury said it is, and they did, and that will stand until a higher court says otherwise.

Did Google invent it first? Nope. Did Google find any prior art? Nope. Was the patent obvious? Nope.

I don't have a problem with large companies paying large sums to inventors who actually produce a product, patent their invention, but get crushed by the market a few years later.

This is actually kinda how it's supposed to work. If this is an example of what is "wrong" then there there must be no patent that is "right".

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

#105

Post by squirejons »

Wow! As a patent agent, those patents are pure MONEY patents, incredibly broad, especially to have been published in 2001 (but with a priority date of 1996) Here is the money claim:

A search engine system comprising: a first system for receiving informons from a network on a continuing search basis, for filtering such informons for relevancy to a query from an individual user, and for storing a ranked list of relevant informons as a wire; a second system for receiving informons from a network on a current demand search basis and for filtering such informons for relevancy to the query from the individual user; and a third system for selecting at least one of the first and second systems to make a search for the query and to return the wire or demand search results to the individual user. ==========

here is the money claim for the other patent:

. A search system comprising: a scanning system for searching for information relevant to a query associated with a first user in a plurality of users; a feedback system for receiving information found to be relevant to the query by other users; and a content-based filter system for combining the information from the feedback system with the information from the scanning system and for filtering the combined information for relevance to at least one of the query and the first user.

man, that second one is a pretty broad patent.

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

#106

Post by noonespecial »

x0054 wrote: post #64

I tried really hard to understand the 2 patents in question in this case. I can see that both patents relate to a method of assigning value to search results based on how long a user spends looking at the result, or number of clicks, etc. But I am sure I am missing a bunch of nuances. Could someone with Patent background explain these to patents: http://www.google.com/patents/US6314420 and http://www.google.com/paten…

>just application of good business practices to the internet...

That's the foundation of nearly all software patents these days. Its business, but on the internet.

It seems to work because of the built in novelty factor. When there was no internet, it was impossible to do business on it, now that there is, its suddenly possible and so seems novel. It feels like a new invention when in fact, its really just an application of the technology to the same old same old.

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

#107

Post by ableal »

graving wrote: post #49
dangrossman wrote: post #2

> Even though there was no evidence of copying—Vringo admitted as much What a ridiculous system we all operate under. You come up with a mathematical formula for ranking some text on a page (in this case, what ads to show first), and you could now owe $250M/year to some company you've never heard of because they already bought the rights to that formula. It turns my stomach; sorry that I have nothing of more substanc…

They(and you), did hear of the company that originally got these patents. Here's the very interesting story behind the patents. http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/31/why-google-might-be-going-t... edit: I am rate limited from replying to fpgeeks reply below so I will post my reply here. First, the author is extremely clear that he invested in Vringo, in fact the whole article is about why he did so., so I am not sure why…

> Here's the very interesting story behind the patents.

> http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/31/why-google-might-be-going-t...

That link is definitely worth a few minutes. Thanks.

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

#108

Post by x0054 »

noonespecial wrote: post #106
x0054 wrote: post #64

I tried really hard to understand the 2 patents in question in this case. I can see that both patents relate to a method of assigning value to search results based on how long a user spends looking at the result, or number of clicks, etc. But I am sure I am missing a bunch of nuances. Could someone with Patent background explain these to patents: http://www.google.com/patents/US6314420 and http://www.google.com/paten…

>just application of good business practices to the internet... That's the foundation of nearly all software patents these days. Its business, but on the internet . It seems to work because of the built in novelty factor. When there was no internet, it was impossible to do business on it, now that there is, its suddenly possible and so seems novel. It feels like a new invention when in fact, its really just an applic…

I wish I could travel back in time to the early 1990 and patent "a method for making profit by buying and/or producing products and selling them at a higher price.... on the internet."

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

#109

Post by rnnr »

saraid216 wrote: post #50
linuxhansl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be pretty well established now that this system does not support innovation (at least not in the software business. If the benefit of society as a whole is the objective then inventions are only worth protecting if they would not have occurred without such protection. An idea clearly does not fall into that category, it's worth is in the execution and not in "having it".

> It seems to be pretty well established now that this system does not support innovation (at least not in the software business. Back when I was actively studying this stuff, it was noted that there are four specific industries where intellectual property just doesn't work as intended. Software was one, pharma was another, and I forget the other two but a quick Google ought to surface them with more credibility than…

I never get that. Why do you make this distinction. Either patents is a good system for all goods or it isn't. What does it make a good system for everything else execpt pharmacy and software?

Dont't get me wrong, I am for abolishing all patents. Even if, say 80% of the patent were unimbigiously justified, the bureaucracy and costs it introduces are tremendous.

I would loved to know the percentage to the total budget of the legal departments of companies like MS, Google and Apple

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

#110

Post by cmdkeen »

WalterBright wrote: post #94
chavesn wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can think to yourself: “ugh, patent trolls are disgusting”. But the protection of intellectual property is what America is built on. Smart people invent things. Then they get to protect the intellectual property on what they invents. Other companies can’t steal[1] that technology. "Protection of intellectual property is what America is built on ?" Hyperbole much? "Smart people invent things. Then they get to pr…

> But the protection of intellectual property is what America is built on. Is it? I recall the story of how the textile industry in America was built upon designs illegally smuggled out of Britain. Also, the movie, auto, and aviation industries were all hobbled for years under patent lawsuits. It was so bad in the aviation business that development in the US pretty much ground to a standstill and the center for aviat…

Not just that - a young America ignored foreign authors copyright in publishing. Film making took off in Southern California in order to escape the Edison company's protection of its film patents.

Intellectual property protection became important to America once it had leapfrogged other nations by ignoring their rights. Which is what makes the current stance on international intellectual property a little hypocritical, especially when it comes to generic drugs in third world countries.

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