Google to buy Motorola Mobility.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/google ... _news_stmp

I wonder why?

It does depend on how good those patents are. Though if they ended many of software patents it would solve many of these problems.

The scuttle seems to be that a lot of Motorola's patents lie in the hardware arena - radio technology and signal electronics. Not directly of help in the current litigation Google are undergoing against Oracle and Apple, most of which is based around software and other IP. This could be a long term investment on Google's behalf, protecting them against the next round of litigation once this one gets resolved.

Andrew Orlowski at The Register seems to think it's a rather bad idea. Either way, you can't imagine Samsung and HTC are particularly happy about events...

Jon

Hardware patents, if the radio etc. patents are in the GPRS and 3G/4G spectrum will be a lot more useful than a bunch of software patents, as Android could, theoretically change their code to work around them, but if Apple needs to connect to GRPS, 3G and 4G networks, they HAVE to have these patents. Infrastructure connection patents will lend Google a lot more weight than a bunch of software patents of questionable validity.

Looking at a lot of the Apple patents, many are a bit wishy-washy and my first thought is "I did that back in the 80s, and it wasn't an original idea back then. How the heck did that patent ever get approved?" (This isn't just an Apple thing, most software patents I read scream prior art at me. In Apple's case, it seems to be "if we take a general practice, which has been used for years and apply the words 'in a mobile device,' we can get it patented." That should be disallowed, why does sorting a list of names warrant a patent, just because it contains the words "in a mobile device," when the same sorting methods have been taught in colleges and universities since the 50s?)

Same applies to One-Click and playlists. They are both so obvious that they should never have been patented. The interesting thing about One click is that it is pretty useless as Amazon settings are such that it does not allow super saver as a default option.

That the American patent system is fundamentally broken is pretty much beyond argument. The question is whether the patents Google has bought are going to actually recoup the money it paid for Motorola in the long run (£8b or something?), either by earning it revenue from other manufacturers or save it having to pay them. Opinion does seem to be rather split in that regard.

Jon

fcuk Apple, Android is king ... hello moto ...

I think that they paid over the odds if it were just for patents. Some of these patents must be old, and some could be near the end of their lives. So income could look meagre.