Google actually has very few patents. Which makes sense. You own and generate a lot of patents if 1. You're interested in shaking-down others (IBM comes to min

Google actually has very few patents. Which makes sense. You own and generate a lot of patents if 1. You're interested in shaking-down others (IBM comes to mind) 2. You've written a big cheque to someone who shook you down and now you're trying to defend yourself. #1 certainly doesn't apply to Google - not yet at least. And I don't think that Google has been badly burned in a patent dispute with anyone yet, so it doesn't look like they've made generating defensive lawsuits a big priority yet. One source on the web from a couple of years ago says that Google's name appears on only about 190 patents in total. I did a search and was able to find ~600 patents with Google as the assignee. The same search yielded ~3700 patents for Apple, ~17000 for Microsoft, and ~64000 for IBM. Apparently Apple was issued more than 700 patents in 2010 alone, versus Google's 282. For the last few years, this is how many patents some of these companies have been issued: #2010: Apple 722 Google 282 Microsoft 3305 Foxconn/honhai 1885 #2009: Apple 399 Google 143 Microsoft 3160 Foxconn/honhai 1310 #2008: Apple 254 Google 60 Microsoft 2310 Foxconn/honhai 1005 #2007: Apple 157 Google 35 Microsoft 1958 Foxconn/honhai 673 #2006: Apple 133 Google 22 Microsoft 1614 Foxconn/honhai 653 #1999-2005 Apple 843 Google 14 Microsoft 3643 Foxconn/honhai 3262 Searching through some of these patents is really discouraging. I remember that when Apple brought their suit against HTC (really, against Android and Google), there were a lot of armchair lawyers here on HN and elsewhere claiming just how obvious some of the patents that Apple was weilding were. At the time I actually believed that some of them had merit. But looking through some of these patents, especially some of the Foxconn ones, is there anyone who really believes that the front bezel design for a PC case (http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/D512721.html http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/D512721.html) or the particulars of a generic USB stick (http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/D537819.html http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/D537819.html) should be patentable? Some of the stuff that I've been looking at over the last hour makes Apple's and Microsoft's patents look like Bell's patent on the telephone.