Google Believes Patent Reform is Necessary to Protect Tech Innovation
By Karla Robinson
August 21, 2012
August 21, 2012
- “After fighting the patent battle of the decade in court with Oracle, Googlers are getting publicly fed up with software patents as a whole,” reports VentureBeat. “Conceptually, they just don’t jive with innovation, two prominent Googlers have said recently.”
- Google’s public policy director Pablo Chavez says patent wars are “not helpful to consumers. They’re not helpful to the marketplace. They’re not helpful to innovation.” And Google isn’t just sitting back and complaining about the problem; they’re taking action.
- By filing amicus briefs, pushing for reforms, and working with other anti-patent tech companies, Google hopes to reinvent the patent system to better suit innovation.
- “For example, currently patents have a 20-year shelf life; Google thinks this could and should be shortened. The company also advocates for strong financial penalties for lawsuit-losing patent trolls and against the patenting of abstract concepts that are only patented in the first place because they’re executed online,” the article explains.
- Internet pioneer Vint Cerf (who invented the TCP/IP protocol and is currently VP and chief Internet evangelist at Google) jokingly suggested at a cloud conference that shooting the patent lawyers would be a logical step in creating the next big tech to replace the Internet. When the laughter subsided, he explained: “Bob [Kahn] and I knew we could not succeed if we tried to protect the Internet’s design. As it turns out that worked out really well, and I think that’s still pretty good advice.”
- “The open ability to develop new applications and try them out has been vital to the Internet’s growth and to the space in which we currently operate,” added Cerf. “It has interesting ways of enhancing both sides of the equation.”
- Google won its case against Oracle, but Android patent suits are still prevalent. “Ironically, just last Friday, Motorola Mobility and Google filed their own patent suit against Apple, asking for an import ban on all Apple devices,” notes the post.
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