Nortel Patent Sale Gets DoJ Review 109
gavron writes "The US Department of Justice will review the Nortel patent sale to the entity formed by Apple, Microsoft, and others. This is the same sale that the Canadian authorities declined to review because the $4B+ deal was valued by them at less than $328M. According to a (paywalled) Wall Street Journal report, 'The Justice Department wants to know whether [the consortium] intends to use them defensively to deter patent lawsuits against its members, or offensively against rivals.'"
Re:So one intent is better than another? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, given that innovation usually means to build new concepts on top of older ideas, or to extent older ideas - innovation means you'll have to defend yourself against other's patents.
Nobody is using actual patent *texts* in order to innovate though:
Regarding "Mutually Assured Destruction" - that can only work if there are two parties. If you have hundreds or thousands of parties involved, it's impossible that they could all be balanced against each other. In this case the patent portfolio prevents newcomers from entering the market, so it's very one-sided. And of course a patent portfolio provides virtually no defense against a company which doesn't produce anything - e.g. a law firm which buys patents.