Google Beefs Up Its IP IQ
August 3, 2011
To a confused goose in rural Kentucky, the patent “thing” is great theatre. Watching the antics of giant companies focused on dominating specific markets and making as much money as possible is interesting. I do have a mobile phone and its seems pretty much like the clunky Treo I had for years. For a short time, I had a crazy phone gizmo with a foil umbrella. My point is that most phones are phones. Over the years, those entranced by miniaturization have grafted on to the basic mobile phone a desktop computer, a touchscreen like the ones used in airports so I could in theory summon a shuttle, and a television set, a stereo, and a rescue beacon like the one I wore on a helicopter flight decades ago.
Now I find today’s modern phone—properly called a smart phone—something a step beyond what I typically require when waddling across the meadow in search of shade in Harrod’s Creek. In fact, to my untrained eye, the smartphone is less an innovation or even an invention. The smartphone is a little red wagon filled with stuff that entertain and inform those with more snap in their synapses than I have.
Nevertheless, I heard that a couple of my goslings have created a patent information service. Rumor has it that the service will be officially released the week of August 8. I know from the tentative explanations my goslings give me that the service is a beta, maybe a pre alpha. I took a look at the service at www.patentpoints.com and three points jumped out at me:
First, the goslings are trying to bring some order to the flood of information about patents.
Second, most of the citations—the content is more like a library vertical file than a news service—addresses some of the business implications of patents. Lawyers are usually okay business people and run many companies. But the coverage of patent jollities often focuses on one slice of a vary large wheel of cheddar, not the cheddar warehouse.
Third, the writing is reasonably clear. The editing is certainly not my doing because I have a tough time getting my dog Max to sit, let alone get him to perform a more advanced command like “come here”.
A good example of the patent related information that just floats without context is the article “Google Says It Hires FTC Intellectual Property Expert Michel.” We learn that Google, the search and ad giant, has hired a former Federal Trade Commission professional. Suzanne Michel “worked for more than 11 years on patent antitrust issues and patent policy.” Google did not say why she was hired. No problem. Big companies do not have to explain why a person from the FTC with expertise in antitrust and patent policy are being hired. Maybe her bonus will be tied to her contributions to Google’s social networking products?
The write up included this passage which I found interesting:
Google, based in Mountain View, California, faces a growing threat from intellectual-property lawsuits and is seeking to buy patents that potentially could be used in counterattacks to create what its General Counsel Kent Walker has called a “disincentive” to sue the company.
Is it possible Ms. Michel will work on behalf of Google to help Google with some of its legal challenges? Will Ms. Michel be able to identify possible upsides and downsides of Google’s intellectual property activities? Will Ms. Michel remember who does what at the FTC and share those contacts with her fellow Googlers? I don’t know the answers to these questions.
What I hope Patent Points will do is offer some critical commentary about such activities? For example, I would hope that a document in the alpha service www.patentpoints.com would say something like:
Google is, after more than a decade of being idiosyncratic, is now following the well worn path in Washington. Like the blue chip consulting firms and other power entities, Google is hiring insiders in what looks like an attempt to exert a gravitational pull on certain activities. How well does this work? Well, just check out the various lobbying success stories like health care, pharmaceuticals, highway construction, and other industry centric activities. The big question is, “Will Google’s more aggressive and visible approach work?” We think it will. That says something about how intellectual property really works in today’s political-business environment.
I don’t think this type of commentary will surface in Patent Points, and I don’t think it will pop up in the mainstream media. After the dust settles, an analysis will appear in an academic journal or some similar publication. In the meantime, the lowly mobile phone will be blended with other functionality until another new thing comes along.
Innovative? Inventive? Nah, obvious and clever. Now I just wish the sound quality on the phone was better. I don’t care about video, streaming podcasts, playing games, or broadcasting like a stranded pilot. I just want to make a call once in a while and nestle beneath the forsythia next to the pond filled with mine run off. Thank heavens for the Environmental Protection Agency, a sister to the Federal Trade Commission too. I am reminded of Ionesco’s Macbett.
Stephen E Arnold, August 3, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search.
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