HP Seeks Buyer For WebOS Patents

judgecorp writes "Hewlett-Packard wants to cash in a lot of mobile patents, as part of Meg Whitman's restructuring, according to reports. HP acquired the WebOS operating system, as seen on phones and tablets, when it bought Palm, but failed to build a business on it. It's since sold its WebOS business to LG for use in TVs and cars but hung onto the patents which are licensed to LG. Now, Bloomberg reports the patents themselves may be for sale — possibly to whoever fails to buy BlackBerry's tempting bundle of mobile technology."

Re:All I can say is...

[RenderSeven]

You know, Palm. The remnants of which will be sold to Facebook. So they can call it FacePalm.

Patents, want to be free.

[Anonymous Coward]

Kickstarter, then release to the public.

Re:

[davester666]

I believe the more accurate statement would be:

HP did a risky investment. They completely fucked it up. The money is gone. What the fuck is this about?

Come on, google!

[SCHecklerX]

If Android could inherit much of what makes WebOS great, I would be ecstatic!

Re:

[Aryden]

Same here. The major issue I had with WebOS was quite simply the lack of software/apps and the general unavailability of any free apps. Beyond that, it really works wonderfully on my touchpad, though it spends 99% of it's time booted into Android...

Re:Come on, google!

[ArhcAngel]

If Android could inherit much of what makes WebOS great, I would be ecstatic!

So...BB 10 is what you are asking for. BlackBerry took the best design elements from WebOS and put them on the rock solid QNX kernel and then made it possible to run ~90% of all Android apps.

Re:

[H0p313ss]

And then flew the entire company into the ground.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

QNX is rock solid - no doubt. But people want devices with lots of features and lots of hardware support, and hardware developers want to develop on an open source OS with royalty free licensing. So, Android runs on linux.

Re:

[davester666]

You forgot to mention the buggy UI layer and buggy apps and year+ old hardware.

Re:

[Merk42]

Like that card UI? They should totally get the designer that did that...

A LOT more than WebOS

[afidel]

Remember, these are the patent assets of the former Palm Inc. so there could be a LOT of basic smartphone patents in there..

Re:A LOT more than WebOS

[wbr1]

This. And there is a good possibility that some rich law firm or other entity will purchase them off to troll with them. I would like to see Google pick them up, or perhaps even MS, as long as they don't go to a troll that will stifle further growth and innovation in the mobile market.

Re:

[wbr1]

Wow.. modded flamebait? There was no trolling involved here, just a reasonable assertion. Prenda, IV. do you have shill mods here?

Re:

[master_kaos]

in a RESTful way

Re:

[JazzLad]

Seriously? [lmgtfy.com]

Re:

[davester666]

If these patents were at all relevant to current smartphones, everybody and their dog would have already have licenses for them [because everybody who has "owned" these patents have been in varying need for money].

So, the value for patent trolls is relatively low, because they only get to go after small startup companies trying to make a new smartphone.

I'd buy that for a dollar!

[xianzombie]

But wouldn't know what to do with it afterwords....

The two best phones combined

[frog_strat]

IMHO the WebOS Palm Pre, and the new Blackberry Z10 are the two best phones as far as gestures and interface go. Blackberry OS 10 is already getting closer to WebOS with release 10.2, It would interesting to see the best features of the two combined.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Is this related to the Patent Trolling bill?

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

First we have a Slashdot article on a bill to combat patent trolling [slashdot.org] and then 90 minutes later HP announce they are looking to offload some patents. There is an obvious connection there, not that HP were necessarily thinking of trolling.

sell 'em to Blackberry!

[swschrad]

put all the kerosene-powered fails in one place.

I have about 5 bucks..

[3.5 stripes]

That should be enough for most of em

How about release them?

[darkNeko]

How about the EFF or some other open source friendly entity organizes a Kickstarter to buy them and make them royalty free for everyone?

Apple already using them in IOS7

[sl4shd0rk]

The WebOS "scrolling mini-window list" and "flick off-screen to terminate" are direct ripoffs done by Apple in IOS7.

Re:

[sootman]

And 95% of everything else in webOS was a direct ripoff of what Apple had done in (as it was known then) iPhone OS. Fans tend to overlook that little detail. Seriously, it was embarrassing watching this [youtube.com] the first time -- watching Matias Duarte act like what he was showing was new. (19:30: "To scroll through my contact list, I just give it a flick...") Between that, and watching Jon Rubinstein wishing he could be Steve Jobs (I'm going to swoop in and save this company!) it was downright painful to watch.