Geeky But Unsuccessful Bid for Patent Stash Sends Google Scouring for Mobile Patents

Very recently, a huge stash of the soon-to-be-defunct telco Nortel mobile-related patents, over 6,000 of them, came under auction and Google was one of the companies interested in grabbing the patent portfolio.

It opened up the bidding war with an impressive $900 million, but ended up losing to an alliance made up by Apple, Microsoft and others.

That loss has now sent Google scouring for patents to gobble up, since its competitors already have a much bigger arsenal of patents in the mobile space, which has now gotten even bigger with the Nortel patents under their belts.

Google, on the other hand, has close to no patents when it comes to core mobile functions, most of its patents in the mobile space, which are few anyway, about 700, relate to the higher functions of the Android operating system.

Bloomberg reports that Google may and probably is looking to buy other patents, especially related to mobile, so it can feel more secure about being sued over patent infringement.

The report is not based on internal sources from Google, but should be accurate nonetheless.

Patents are like nuclear weapons

The number of patents a company owns acts as a deterrent for other companies trying to cash in or just inconvenience the competition by claiming patent infringement.

Patents were initially created to make sure that companies can fend off those that would just copy their products and were designed to award a limited amount of protection.

These days, patents are used like nuclear weapons, big companies amass them in a patent cold war. The more you have, the more secure you can feel about not being sued and the more you can use them as bargaining chips when you need to throw your weight around.

And if you do get sued, you can sue right back, the way broad patents are awarded, especially in the US, it's impossible not to find something to sue another company over, if you have enough of them.

Google has been very adamant in its dislike of patents and hasn't filed as many as other companies. It has never used them offensively, to sue another company, either.

Google is a sitting duck in patent lawsuits

But as it increasingly comes under fire - the Oracle Java-related lawsuit is one example - especially when it comes to its Android operating system, Google could have really used the Nortel patents.

The company had an interesting strategy (interesting in this case is not a positive remark) and made quirky bids like $1,902,160,540 and $2,614,972,128. It's top bid was $3.14159 billion.

Yes, that last number is the value of Pi, the mathematical constant. The other should be familiar to math and science buffs as well, they're Brun’s constant and Meissel-Mertens constant. Google also made other geeky bids, like the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

If it had won, this would have been yet another thing that makes Google special. But the company was perhaps too confident and not only got outbid by its rivals, its strange numbers also made it seem like it wasn't taking the whole thing seriously, when it really should have had.