[ocdtrekkie]

Note that Google hasn't committed to not be litigious with most of it's good patents. They've signed their patent pledge for a very limited scope of patents which looks good for PR purposes.

Bear in mind, patent extortion tends to look good as a business model once your main revenue source is starting to wane. So while Google may be behaving with patents today, they've been amassing a pretty large library... and the advertising market is expected to start going downhill fast.

Google has pledged not to abuse 245 patents: http://www.google.com/patents/opnpledge/patents/

It's hard to get an accurate number on how many patents Google owns (Google's search results are unhelpful, I'm sure they know, but they aren't sharing), but considering they picked up 17,000 from the Motorola acquisition alone, we can assume safely that Google is reserving the right to be a patent troll.

[DannyBee]

"Note that Google hasn't committed to not be litigious with most of it's good patents.'

Google has released 4000+ open source projects[1] under the apache license, which has a pretty broad patent grant, something you seem to be completely ignoring.

This includes things like tensorflow, the maps geometry library, etc.

I'm not sure what you consider "the good patents", but for most developers, it's the stuff we open source.

[1] This is just the 30 day active number, the total number over the 11 years i've been at Google is closer to 12k, last i looked.

[ocdtrekkie]

Re: Apache license. But that only really covers the patent as far as the specific open source work in question. Implementing the content of said patent independently would leave you open to being sued by Google, right?

The question is, if Google has this open patent pledge, right, why are only 245 patents in it of the tens of thousands they have? Dare I suggest you ask Larry Page if you ever get the chance, why is Google so afraid to put it's money where it's PR spin is? If Google TRULY believes what it says, it'd act on it.

[DannyBee]

"Re: Apache license. But that only really covers the patent as far as the specific open source work in question. Implementing the content of said patent independently would leave you open to being sued by Google, right?"

Maybe? But i'm not sure what the point is? This is true of literally every patent granting open source license I mean, i'll be honest, this basically sounds like whining to me. Nothing is ever enough.

As for the open patent pledge, it's pretty simple: Nobody has ever cared enough to desire more patents there.

Seriously. 99% of people don't go around trying to reimplement the stuff we do, they use the implementations we give them. Where they haven't, and it's serious, Google has tried to pledge patents. This has happened pretty much never. In fact, i can't think of the last time someone asked. Optimizing heavily for the 1% case makes no sense.

Past that, OPN says "The OPN Pledge is designed to supplement existing OSS licensing alternatives ..." (IE it's designed to supplement our permissive licensing).

In any case, it sounds like you have an axe to grind here, so i'm pretty much out, since i'm sure no answer i give you will ever satisfy you.

[ocdtrekkie]

The answer "Hey, we're working on getting all our patents into our patent pledge" would totally satisfy me. But let's be honest: It's never going to happen.

Patent licensing that only benefits people using Google tech is exactly the sort of hypocrisy Google and others accuse Microsoft of. (Manufacturers who ship Windows Mobile generally don't get sued for violating Microsoft's patents, AFAIK.) Obviously, since Microsoft's OS would implement it's own mobile device tech, the sorts of protections afforded by Google via Apache licensing probably doesn't protect Microsoft from a suit by Google, for example.

What is the harm in Google pledging all of their patents, if they have no intention to ever use them offensively?

[DannyBee]

"The answer "Hey, we're working on getting all our patents into our patent pledge" would totally satisfy me. But let's be honest: It's never going to happen. "

It's not supposed to happen? The same way that one does not have to give up all their worldly possessions to be a good catholic.

"Patent licensing that only benefits people using Google tech is exactly the sort of hypocrisy Google and others accuse Microsoft of."

Except that's not what it is, and spinning it this way just shows you keep trying to find ways to hate it.

It's patent that benefits people using the code google gave them. If you take the code from a google patented project, and use it, derive from it, whatever, you end up with patent protection.

Which, as i said, 99% of people do, including Microsoft, so your next example is simply wrong.

These companies simply don't usually do what you are saying is the issue. IE " Obviously, since Microsoft's OS would implement it's own mobile device tech, the sorts of protections afforded by Google via Apache licensing probably doesn't protect Microsoft from a suit by Google, for example."

Is neither obvious, nor correct. In fact, they just use our implementation in the cases i'm aware of. The last time someone came to us and said "i want to use the patents but not the code", was webm. So we created a spec, and gave patent license to all implementations of the spec, google created or not.

Can you provide a real example instead of theoretical cases? I can state, affirmatively, that anyone who has come to us with a serious need, we've solved it, AFAIK. Can you provide a counterexample?

"What is the harm in Google pledging all of their patents, if they have no intention to ever use them offensively?"

What's the benefit? There are lots of possible harms, like the inability to use them defensively in certain situations (no pledge is perfect, it's not possible to create something without loopholes), the inability to maintain the status quo of patent peace, etc. There's a lot of risk here.

You seem to have this black and white view where this is zero risk, and it's just silly to me.

It's like saying: What's the harm in destroying all of the US nuclear weapons if they never plan on using them offensively?

You act as if this is a zero risk proposition, but it's not.

[ocdtrekkie]

The benefit is being able to trust they won't be used offensively. Being able to trust those patents were open for use, and not at risk of being weaponized, is a major benefit.

You have to bear in mind, for probably 99% of Google's patents (as I said, we don't really have an exact official number including acquisitions), Google is entirely capable of either selling them to Intellectual Ventures et al. or going patent troll themselves when the market turns against them (or their business model becomes illegal).

The fact that so far Google has been accommodating with a small number of patents and currently claims to be against using patent litigation. What Google engineers preach and what Google legal does (see also: support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership) are two different things. In fact, much like Microsoft, as we can see with a combination of open sourcing and patent litigation.

Aim to be Tesla[0], not Oracle.

[0]https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you

[bitmapbrother]

>What is the harm in Google pledging all of their patents, if they have no intention to ever use them offensively?

So they can use them defensively against patent trolls like Microsoft?

[mcintyre1994]

https://patents.google.com/?assignee=Google+Inc. puts them at 30,440 but I'm not sure that'll include Motorola ones or any acquired ones.

[bitmapbrother]

Why are you addressing a hypothetical theory that has absolutely no basis? Why not address a real issue like Microsoft extorting Billions from Android OEM's for their obsolete, junk filled prior art ridden patents?