Judge criticizes Google and Oracle at hearing

Re:Judge criticizes Google and Oracle at hearing by rryan on Thursday July 21, 2011 @10:19PM (#2792123)

In general, Google has not aggressively patented things. They have been issued ~300 patents. Compare to IBM's over 26k patents in the US alone. Essentially they showed up to a nuclear weapon fight with a bouquet of flowers.

EDIT: I realize IBM is 100 years old and Google is 10.. they're still way ahead in patents-per-year, and the 26k is only active patents.

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Re:Judge criticizes Google and Oracle at hearing by WalterGR on Friday July 22, 2011 @04:26AM (#2792790)

In general, Google has not aggressively patented things. They have been issued ~300 patents. Compare to IBM's over 26k patents in the US alone.

Is it possible that Google's patent assignment policy has affected those numbers "in Google's favor"? [1]

For example, could the policy be that patents are assigned to employees, but employees grant Google a non-revocable perpetual license to use those patents?

(IANAL, etc...)

[1] i.e. Fewer patents assigned to Google = less aggressively patenting.

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Re:Judge criticizes Google and Oracle at hearing by moe on Thursday July 21, 2011 @10:35PM (#2792163)

Might be wishful thinking, but this crossed my mind:

The only winning move is not to play...

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Re:Judge criticizes Google and Oracle at hearing by jerf on Thursday July 21, 2011 @11:10PM (#2792248)

Remember the context of that. It's not a general statement (even if the authors would agree with the generalized "don't fight" version); it's in the context of two sides armed to the teeth. If only one side is armed, there is the "nuke the other side" solution, which at least in the way the computer was measuring works just fine. And in this case we aren't talking about literal deaths, so it applies even moreso. MAD doesn't work as a strategy when you don't have the A or the D.

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