7 ms·
They're being painted as a victim because they are. Patents are BS and continue to hinder innovation. They may be anti-competitive in other areas (although I
by watty 15y ago
They're being painted as a victim because they are. Patents are BS and continue to hinder innovation.
They may be anti-competitive in other areas (although I don't know specifics). Can you provide some sources?
- cma 15y agoThey sure touted their PageRank patent.
- yanw 15y agoHaving patents doesn't mean you agree with the state of the patent system, also they have yet to sue anyone over patents.
- azakai 15y agoThey are proud of it, for sure. But have they ever used it to sue anyone?
- chaz 15y agoThe patent is owned by Stanford. From Wikipedia: The name "PageRank" is a trademark of Google, and the PageRank process has been patented (U.S. Patent 6,285,999). However, the patent is assigned to Stanford University and not to Google. Google has exclusive license rights on the patent from Stanford University. The university received 1.8 million shares of Google in exchange for use of the patent; the shares were sold in 2005 for $336 million.
- rtrunck 15y agoBeing an exclusive licensee provides significant rights to Google, for example, they could sue for infringement of that patent.
- kelnos 15y agoI'm not sure that they can. I don't believe patent law provides for anyone by the patent holder to sue for infringement. Could be wrong, though, but I seem to recall a similar story in the news not too long ago.
- yardie 15y agoI believe they can. Stanford is still the patent holder and is charged with enforcing their patent but they could put it into the exclusive contract with Google that Google is the enforcer under contract by Stanford. Of course when Google's attorneys send out C&Ds they will need to mention the stanford-Google relationship and not misrepresent that they are the patent holder.
- MikeCapone 15y agoTo me, that one seems to actually be a non-obvious, patentable idea. It made the world a better place. This isn't 1-click checkout or clickable phone numbers on a smart phone... But I don't think Google actually sued anyone when most other search engines started using that method. Correct me if I'm wrong.
- ldar15 15y agoIt is exactly the kind of innovative solution that multiple developers would discover independently. It is exactly the kind of idea that does not need a 17 year monopoly to incentivize investors to provide cash for its development.
- kenjackson 15y agoIn fact multiple people did discover similar strategies at the same point in time such as: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/auth.pdf http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/auth.pdf
- VladRussian 15y agoevaluating/rating articles on the base of references and citations of them in other articles has been a useful and known practice in academia. Applying it to web pages was innovative (compare with original _invention_ of such algorithm for the scientific articles), yet doesn't seems to be something that warrants involvement of government force to keep others from applying the same academia article evaluation principles to web pages.
- Steko 15y agoThey're "the victim" of patents only because they have chosen to pursue a pattern of willfully infringing on competing companies patents.
- slackerIII 15y agoHow do you know it is willful? That is an important word when it comes to patent infringement.
- kenjackson 15y agoI think willful infringement will play a large role in this Oracle case. For that case, we'll probably know over the next year if it was willful.
- Steko 15y agoI don't claim to know anything. I assumed it's willful because it's been a repeated pattern of behavior and because of the full court propaganda press they have been making against patents.
- hn_decay 15y agoThis is an incredible claim. Do you realize that Apple and Microsoft are being sued constantly as well?
- Steko 15y agoI don't know what's incredible about it. That a company that copies things might infringe patents? Do I realize that Apple infringes patents? Yes. Are you aware that Apple doesn't cry about how it's the end of the world and we're all going to have to pay more for the next iphone because they had to write Nokia a check for Nokia's previous and substantial innovations to mobile?
- kelnos 15y ago
- maercsrats 15y agoThere is an anti-compete lawsuit going on between google and skyhook: http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/10/internal-emails-reveal-googles-desperation-over-skyhooks-andro/ http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/10/internal-emails-reveal-go... There needs to be significant patent/ip reform in this country, there's no question about that. Google isn't necessarily a "good guy", though. There is a lot of money to be made out there and all of the big guys are using everything at their disposal to gain the upper hand.
- chocopuff 15y agoThe hypocrisy is unbelievable: Google is a major investor in patent troll firm Intellectual Ventures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/05/intellectual-ventures-reveals-investors.html http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/05/intellectual-ventur... Amazon, Apple, Cisco, eBay, Microsoft, etc. are also investors but they are not acting like whiny babies and acting all high and mighty going around preaching about how patents are destroying innovation.