Nortel Patent Sale Gets DoJ Review 109
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the use-your-powers-for-good dept.
from the use-your-powers-for-good dept.
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.'"
Value... (Score:1, Insightful)
$328M = $4B+ ? Ain't Conservative math and fiscal responsibility wonderful?
A patent must be defended (Score:0, Insightful)
It does not matter if competitor like or not that a patent exist for something they want to market. For it to have any value, the patent must be defended, either defensively or offensively. So asking the question is kind of stupid.
Libertarians still here (Score:5, Insightful)
There are still libertarians here, they are just rarer and drowned out by the noisier people with ideals and no common sense or understanding of how humans work.
google ip theft (Score:2, Insightful)
Google is a blatant IP theft and idiots who have fallen for their "open" agenda are just pawns. If Google was really Open it would make available it's Search Engine, Page Rank patents and software for everybody to use. It doesn't do that because it is EVIL and seeks to commoditize the Smart Phone and Tablet OS with free and open source Andriod software so it can push it's search engine and web apps to datamine private personal data to display adverts to the masses.
Google and Andriod are only interested in your personal information to make money selling advertising to all their users. This IS NOT the promotion of a free and open source ideals. It's about making sure Microsoft and Apple do not completely take over mobile computing operating systems and marginalize Google near monopoly on Internet advertising.
Re:So one intent is better than another? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you are Google, which is responsible for the Android operating system, which is hated by Apple. If you don't have defensive patents, you are going to get sued into oblivion. Hell, the ITC might even rule that your products cannot be shipped into the United States because of infringement. I mean, Apple currently has HTC over a barrel. Do you think that HTC shareholders wished they had a few defensive patents to use against the iPhone?
The law might suck, but businessmen have to play by the law.