Intellectual Property Analysis of Google’s IBM Patent Acquisition
In April 2011, Google’s statement of its Nortel auction bid alluded to the latest buzzword of the tech industry: patent trolls. In the past year alone, almost forty Android-related lawsuits have been filed by entities that may be attempting to stifle or monetize on the success of the Android OS – a platform that is activated in more than 550,000 devices each day. While some of these lawsuits specifically target Google, many of them target device-makers utilizing the Android platform. For example, Microsoft has shown itself to be a major contender against Android and its device manufacturers, both in the courtroom and on its corporate blog, where it states Microsoft has “established an industry-wide licensing program” to “help companies address Android’s ongoing infringement”. If Google continues to pursue growth in markets such as database and mobile OS software, they may face financial and innovation development obstacles, as losses in court could mean expensive royalty or settlement fees for device manufacturers, potentially decreasing developer interest in using the Android OS in the future.
Many suspect that Google is initiating a defensive strategy against future patent infringement litigation, first with its bid on Nortel’s patent portfolio in April and then with the recent IBM patent acquisition announcement. By expanding its patent coverage over a broader innovation space, Google seems to be attempting to keep both trolls and rivals of the Android OS from hacking away at the platform. Prior to the IBM patent acquisition, Google owned more than seven-hundred issued patents, but as Kent Walker, Google’s General Counsel, stated in April, “one of a company’s best defenses against this kind of litigation is (ironically) to have a formidable patent portfolio, as this helps maintain your freedom to develop new products and services.”
An analysis using the M·CAM DOORS™ platform was performed on Google’s 1,029-patent acquisition from IBM . A breakdown of these patents by U.S. classification code reveals the top technology spaces that Google may be hoping to defend itself in, specifically U. S. classification for database processing, data file management and multi computer data processing which describe Google’s core technologies and technologies for the cloud computing market. In addition, a commercial analysis using the M·CAM proprietary unstructured data mining algorithm shows that 40% of the newly acquired IBM patents appear to be inadequate to protect Google and its corporate activities, and may even be a liability.
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