Google Remains Patent Poor After an Unhelpful Purchase

October 16, 2011

After analyzing 1,029 patents that Google purchased from IBM in July, IPVision, a patent analyzing software company, has found little that the search giant can use to either attack its competitors or defend its own products.

The Technology Review article Google’s Troubled Search for Valuable Patents states:

Bundles of patents covering computing—especially mobile computing—technology have become a hot property in recent months. Apple, Nokia, Microsoft, and others have used them to extract money from competitors, or even to block those competitors’ products from being sold.

Unlike many of it’s competitors, Google is a young company without the decades of research and patent filings needed to establish an extensive patent portfolio. In order to make up for this disadvantage, Google announced in August that it plans to purchase Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, specifically to capitalize on the company’s patents.Despite remaining patent poor, Google keeps trucking on. It has been revealed that, as of two weeks ago, the company has purchased a second set of IBM patents. We can only hope that that this set proves more valuable than the previous one.

Jasmine Ashton, Oct 16, 2011

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business strategy, Google, News, Patents, Search

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.