[gvb]

No, they did not say the Novell and Nortell patents were bogus. They said most of the 250,000 patents that a typical smart phone "infringes on" are bogus.

1. The number 250,000 is clearly a made up number, but the real number is in that ballpark (order of magnitude).

2. The Novell patents numbered ~800, a very small fraction of 250,000.

3. The Nortel patents numbered ~6000, still a small fraction of 250,000.

While some of the Novell and Nortel patents likely are bogus, as a whole they are very likely to be higher quality than the other 240,000 smart phone-threatening patents out there.

[mstepniowski]

You're right. Google (in David Drummond words) called these patents "dubious", not "bogus": http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/when-patents-attack-a...

""" This anti-competitive strategy is also escalating the cost of patents way beyond what they’re really worth. The winning $4.5 billion for Nortel’s patent portfolio was nearly five times larger than the pre-auction estimate of $1 billion. Fortunately, the law frowns on the accumulation of dubious patents for anti-competitive means — which means these deals are likely to draw regulatory scrutiny, and this patent bubble will pop. """