NEW YORK: Google, facing a growing threat of intellectualproperty lawsuits, acquired a batch of patents this month from International Business Machines (IBM) to bolster its portfolio. The US Patent and Trademark Office on July 11 and 12 recorded more than 1,000 patents assigned to Mountain View, California-based Google by IBM.
They cover a range of topics, including microprocessing chips, regional databases and memory fabrication and architecture , said Bill Slawski, president of SEO by the Sea, a Warrenton, Virginia-based research firm specializing in search-engine optimisation . "Like many tech companies, at times we'll acquire patents that are relevant to our business ," Google said on Saturday in an emailed statement.
Chris Andrews, an IBM spokesman, declined to comment. Google's Android mobile-operating system has been targeted in at least six legal complaints, increasing its need for intellectual property to defend the company against litigation . "Among this collection of patents, there may be something that can help Google in these lawsuits," Slawski said in an interview on Sunday . "It doesn't hurt to have a big patent portfolio these days." Google, the world's largest Internet search company, aims to curb abuses of the patent system .
It's calling on Congress and the Federal Trade Commission to rein in lawsuits, and asking the Patent and Trademark Office to take closer looks at patents being used in litigation. "The tech industry has a significant problem ," Google general counsel Kent Walker said in an interview earlier this week. "Software patents are kind of gumming up the works of innovation." Google's rivals have said the company is critical of the patent system because it has few patents of its own and entered a smartphone market where companies had been researching and selling products for years before Android phones went on sale in 2008.
The Android system is a free, open-source program that relies on some nonproprietary features Google didn't create and allows outside developers to modify the code. That has left the company vulnerable to claims that it built Android on the backs of research done by other technology companies. "The patent is the fruit of a company's efforts," Slawski said. "It says you've given yourself a chance to develop technology and then actually do something with it." Google, which had $39.1 billion in cash and short-term investments as of June, put in an initial $900 million offer in April to buy the patents of bankrupt phone-equipment maker Nortel Networks.
Unfortunately, 999 of the patents were for "off-white desktop computer with black parts, a floppy drive and 1 megabyte hard drive," and the 1000th patent was for OS/2. Bummer.
