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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

#111

Post by dTal »

1stop wrote: post #103
victorhooi wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Firstly GDP is not a measure of what an economy "makes", it is a measure of its throughput. Remember that every dollar the US government "borrows" out of thin air and spends on military hardware adds to that total, so I wouldn't regard a high GDP as necessarily a sign of economic health.

Secondly, of your haphazard list, only Boeing does any manufacturing. Maybe instead of knee-jerking with "America is great" you should read a bit more carefully?

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

#112

Post by lifeisstillgood »

andrewfong wrote: post #84
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…

The lack of an independent invention defense (or some variation of this) is pretty much 80% of what's wrong with patent law in my opinion. A sampling of the issues an independent invention addresses: * Obviousness. Patents are required to be non-obvious to a "person holding ordinary skill in the art", but obviousness is highly subjective and difficult to assess (especially for a non-technical jury). In contrast, eval…

Cigarette companies don't get those kind of super-sized judgements against them, gun manufacturers don't. Why the hell should Google?

My favourite part is just how good the Microsoft lawyers are - "we will pay 5% of whatever Google pays" is an incredibly good deal and shafts Google quite nicely at the same time.

And anyway, isn't this really obvious - to anyone? I have scanned the patents referenced and frankly I don't see any algorithm that is not "return information relevant to the search term presented, and mark the users profile if they liked it"

No implementation details, which frankly seems to be the whole difference in software vs hardware.

Edit: my calculation ignored US only

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

#113

Post by zimpenfish »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #112
andrewfong wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of an independent invention defense (or some variation of this) is pretty much 80% of what's wrong with patent law in my opinion. A sampling of the issues an independent invention addresses: * Obviousness. Patents are required to be non-obvious to a "person holding ordinary skill in the art", but obviousness is highly subjective and difficult to assess (especially for a non-technical jury). In contrast, eval…

Cigarette companies don't get those kind of super-sized judgements against them, gun manufacturers don't. Why the hell should Google? My favourite part is just how good the Microsoft lawyers are - "we will pay 5% of whatever Google pays" is an incredibly good deal and shafts Google quite nicely at the same time. And anyway, isn't this really obvious - to anyone? I have scanned the patents referenced and frankly I don…

Cigarette companies do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agree...

"the original participating manufacturers (OPM) agreed to pay a minimum of $206 billion over the first twenty-five years of the agreement" - 4 companies, 25 years, works out at $2.1bn a year each. 10x more than the article thinks Google will pay out...

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

#114

Post by aquadrop »

allochthon wrote: post #47
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…

I agree. The basis for the plaintiff's suit no doubt consists of rarefied lawyerese, and the plaintiff has probably added no value to the world. But they get many millions. How has the property law been allowed to tie itself up into this knot?

Yes, I think they got millions for doing nothing is one of the problems. Probably, you should only have right to defend your patent if you're actually using it. Like that's part of your business. And if you don't use it for couple of years, patent goes to public domain.

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

#115

Post by klipt »

x0054 wrote: post #108
noonespecial wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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."

"A method for taking existing existing techniques and patenting their usage on the internet."

I call it "the meta patent troll".

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

#118

Post by zyrthofar »

WalterBright wrote: post #90

What's also terrible about the patent system is there is simply no way for any of us to tell, when we develop something, if we're infringing on patents or not. We're all subject, at any time, to being subject to some massive infringement lawsuit. What I do not understand is why the big companies do not all get together and lobby to abolish software patents. Do they think that if they acquire enough patents, they will…

As a programmer, this is exactly what I fear.

It is also why I will not create a startup company, and have my dream crash because of a failed and corrupt system.

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

#119

Post by skj »

devcpp wrote: post #85
CamperBob2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember thinking exactly that, when Microsoft was hit by the $100M Stac Electronics judgement in 1993. "Surely large companies will understand now that they have a lot more to lose from software patents than they could possibly have to gain," I said to myself. "I'll bet they're calling their pet Congressmen and writing checks this very minute." I've been wrong before, but not usually that wrong.

Instead they played that same game and are now part of the big software patent companies. In a selfish perspective, it does make sense. I fear Google one day understands that they should join this mafia and start suing for their patents, under the pressure of their shareholders.

The Googlers would revolt.

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

#120

Post by skj »

zaroth wrote: post #104

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), bu…

Let's remember that when the guy was "gobbled right up", Google was a dozen people with one server in a garage.

The fact that multiple entities came up with this idea, without communication of the idea between them, means that it was more a function of the environment the idea was conceived in than the person who did the conceiving.

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