I wonder whether Google's support for Patent Reform will follow a similar course as their support for Net Neutrality.<p>That is: will it get dropped the moment they secure a deal that puts them on the other side of the fence.<p>I mean, that's what this really is: Google attempting to sweeten their patent portfolio so they can land cross-licensing agreements with the other tech giants. If successful, their self-interest would be to maintain the patent system.<p>And I can't say I'm optimistic they'll stick to their currently-stated principles once those run counter to their self-interest.
I posted a little while ago that Google has very few patents of it's own - only about 600 that I can find. Apple has about 3700, Microsoft about 17000. HTC has next to none.<p>Now Google wants to spend a billion dollars to buy 6000 Nortel patents. I guess Google learned that you don't bring smart employees, a sane corporate culture, genuine innovation, and a good reputation among your customers to a patent fight.<p>Another interesting angle to this whole patent auction going on here in canuckistan is going to be Google vs. Huawei. Both of these companies are in the telecom sector, both of them have a metric ton of money (although maybe Huawei has the advantage here - theirs is pretty much guaranteed by the Chinese treasury, in spite of whatever ridiculous claims of independence they've made), both of them are competing with established players with huge patent portfolios, but neither of them have many patents themselves. Huawei has already made it known that they want those patents too. We'll see how this turns out.
It is coming: <a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/07/the-coming-software-patent-apocalypse.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/07/the-coming-software...</a>