[AlbertCory]

It's amazing that neither the article nor any of the comments so far mention that Google bought part of Motorola, for its 10,000 patents. Then sold it a few years later.

I was in Google Patents and I interviewed people for the position of "acquirer of patents." This was a period when they actually thought the "throw weight" of your patent portfolio really mattered in cross-licensing deals. Most of those patents were utterly worthless in any sort of deal.

[chiph]

Not just their patents, but also their cellphone division. My understanding was that the Motorola phones were going to be Google's flagship devices for Android.

So I bought one, and I really liked it - I got regular OS updates (unlike many Android licensees), the phone had a gorgeous walnut veneer back, and it fit well in my hand. Nice.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Motorola phones are still the best Android phones. Way better that Samsungs / Xiaomi / Huawei phones with heavily tweaked (for the worse) devices.

[noir_lord]

I had a few and then switched last time to a Nokia 6.1 which is simply brilliant (the industrial design for a cheap end of mid-range is amazing - as is the build quality).

If anything Nokia cocked up, they made a phone so good I haven't seen the need to upgrade and since it's AndroidOne I'm still getting updates.

I had to laugh at the clear piss take of the Jonny Ive Apple videos - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmJitfThItk at the time it got my attention and they are that tough.

8000 miles on a motorcycle handlebar mount and it looks like it came out the box.

[nomad225]

I had a Moto X (2014), and I had a very similar impression. The launcher was very minimal and AOSP-like. It was also one of the first Android devices that had always-on listening for a trigger word (Hello Moto X?). I always found that almost magically useful at setting alarms when I was already in bed.

[astronautjones]

I had a peak-motorola era moto G - it was fast, up to date, devoid of bloatware, and the camera was of incredible quality for such a cheap phone. the only downside was it was flimsy and met an early death at the hands of my merciless kitchen tile

[tinco]

If they sold the original moto g with a modern CPU and RAM, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. That really was the perfect android phone.

[AlbertCory]

Yeah, I remember the phone that had real wood as its case. That was a nice idea. You would think that would have more success.

[alexchro93]

My dad worked for a division of Motorola that was bought by Google and it sure felt like, during that time, if you were working for Motorola you could be laid off at a moment's notice.

Google stock was eventually included in his compensation package, though. I can imagine that eased some of the worry.

[DerekL]

It's not relevant to the article, which is about real estate. Also, the article mentions the split into two companies. Google bought Motorola Mobility, but the headquarters went to Motorola Solutions.

[mixmastamyk]

> This was a period when they actually thought the "throw weight" of your patent portfolio really mattered in cross-licensing deals. Most of those patents were utterly worthless in any sort of deal.

Could anyone expand on this? Sounds interesting, and I know little about it.

[excitom]

I think what he is referring to is when two mega corps would get into an IP dispute, the lawyers would bring the patent portfolios to the table. It would not be feasible to actually read through them all, so the agreement would be "surely in my large stack you are violating something and surely in your large stack we are violating something." So then you would weigh or measure the height of the stack, and the owner of the smaller would pay some royalties to the owner of the larger.

This is an exaggeration of course, but perhaps not far off the mark.

[AlbertCory]

> "This is an exaggeration" Ya think? Maybe when a big company is threatening a rube. If two big companies are making a deal, you can be damn sure that they use all available software to analyze each other's portfolios, and then read, manually, the ones that seem important. And get their legal counsels for the relevant divisions to read them, too, although they probably already know them.

Cross-licensing deals are immensely complicated. You have to think about indemnifying the partners, in particular. I actually sat in the Apple v. Samsung trial for one day, because Google was indemnifying Samsung, as they frequently do for Android partners.

A big problem with Motorola was: they actually make the hardware, so Google was being sued directly. The patent infringement suits are usually against the company that makes the device.

[jsnell]

Search for the "smartphone patent wars". There was a few year period when basically everyone involved in the industry were suing each other for pretty much anything. Even user interfaces.

The graphs of who was suing whom are hilarious by today's standards,.

[H8crilA]

That included a row over the generic concept of a tablet, where in defense the Samsung lawyers brought up prior art ... from the Kubrick movie "2001: A Space Odyssey". The astronauts in the movie are using something that looks just like a tablet.

[pfdietz]

When Blue Origin sued SpaceX over a patent on the concept of landing a rocket stage on a ship, SpaceX showed a Soviet movie with a scene where (fictionally) just that happens.

[AlbertCory]

You don't patent a "concept." You patent an invention.

I'm not familiar with that particular case, but I really doubt that a clip from 2001 was dispositive of anything. Unless the patent really was as broad as "a flat computing device."

[H8crilA]

https://www.cnet.com/news/samsung-says-2001-a-space-odyssey-...

[AlbertCory]

This was a design patent, not a utility patent. That means they patented the look of the tablet, meaning the non-functional parts. They did not have a patent on the "concept of a tablet."

I guess I can go look up that design patent now. It's entirely possible that 2001 did anticipate the look of the iPad, but we can also look at the record of the trial to find out how this played out.

[AlbertCory]

"expand" how? Help me out.

[rtkwe]

I always thought those big patent acquisition deals were as a mutually assured destruction tool in a potential patent fight. If sued they would have something to countersue with somewhere in that massive pile of vague patents.

[robertlagrant]

I remember reading about that! Strange times.

[dboreham]

Precursor to the NFT craze..