More on Google and Patents

The convolutions continue.<p>"What I’m complaining about isn’t Google playing the game, but rather their insistent whining about their competitors only after they lost the game."<p>It's easy to redefine the game as whatever suits your outcome. And it's perfectly reasonable to complain about an unfair game that you're losing because it's unfair.<p>And anyway, by this logic, you could simply call the PR battle 'part of the game' and say Google is just playing on the rising anti-patent sentiment in the industry.

<i>Google’s blog post comes across as whining that Apple and Microsoft (Microsoft especially) aren’t sitting back and allowing Android to destroy their businesses.</i><p>No, Google's blog post rightly points out that Microsoft and Apple haven chosen to fight against Android by litigation rather than invention. If Google where "whining" that Microsoft and Apple were building cooler stuff into their phones, it would be laughable. But that isn't what Google is saying. Suggesting that Google wants MS/Apple to "[sit] back and [allow] Android to destroy their business" is an obvious and clumsy strawman.<p>Gruber isn't arguing the merits of the platforms. He's arguing that the patent system as-is does work, and that Microsoft and Apple shouldn't be criticized for using it. The problem is, they aren't merely <i>using</i> it, they are <i>abusing</i> it, which seems to suggest that it doesn't work nearly as well as Gruber says it does.<p>[EDIT: Minor grammatical cleanup]

&#62; But if Android does violate worthy patents, Google’s actions here are just as competitive as any other companies. You can guess which side I’m on, I suppose.<p>Why not point us to such a worthy patent, then? All the patents that have been mentioned publicly so far have clearly been worthless and trivial.<p>To make his case, a single worthy patent would suffice.

"I never said it wasn’t OK for “Google to try and buy the same patents to not be sued.” Apple, Google, Microsoft, Oracle — they’re all playing the game. If Google had won the Nortel patents, and used those patents to secure licensing agreements for other patents (from, say, Microsoft and Apple) — that’s how the patent game is played. What I’m complaining about isn’t Google playing the game, but rather their insistent whining about their competitors only after they lost the game."<p>Can't say I disagree.

Doesn't the fact that everybody is jockeying to buy the IP of <i>other</i> companies to protect themselves from patent lawsuits suggest the system is broken?<p>One piece of patent reform that might be nice is that you can't acquire IP, unless you have a majority of the people who created the IP under full-time employment (or something to that effect).

<i>Google could have joined consortium to take the Novell patents off the table. But Google wanted those patents for itself to defend against other patents they already infringed upon.</i><p>This is extremely disingenuous. It is likely that Google would need to obtain defensive patents whether it believes it violates any patents at all.

<i>Google seems to feel entitled to copy whatever it wants. Android copies the UI from the iPhone. Places copied data from Yelp. Google+ copies from Facebook. Their coupon thing is a clone of Groupon. And yet it’s Google that acts as though it has been offended when these competitors fight back.</i><p>The one sited source is extremely shallow, and the rest is both not sourced and laughable. Gruber is making quite the leap after his hand waving and backpedaling.

Is anyone willing to go through what Apple copies, and make a full list with specific items they've copied from others? Because I'm sure like 80% of the technology used in their products is not their own, and most of the other 20% was based on older technology.<p>Look, I'm not saying Apple is not an innovative company. It is. But what exactly does an innovative company mean? Does it mean their product is 100% based on their own technology? 90% based on their own technology?<p>I doubt it even comes close to that. Take the iPhone for example. Did Apple re-invent the the 2G tech in it? The 3G one? Did they invent the processor in it? What about the GPU? Did they invent the whole multi-touch panel? Was the invention 100% based on their knowledge and technology if it was? I'm sure the UI can be de-constructed the same way, too, to prove most of it is not "brand new".<p>If they invented so much in the iPhone, why is it that they can only win against HTC with patents from 1994 and 1996, that aren't even related to smartphones, let alone the iPhone?<p>It really bothers me to see how everyone treats iPhone as if 100% of its technology was invented by Apple, and 100% of Android's technology was "stolen" and "copied", because that's completely false.<p>Perhaps, the iPhone has 10% of its technology that is actually new, and perhaps Android only has 5% of it that is brand new, and because of that I suppose you can call Apple more innovative than Google, but let's not pretend that Apple doesn't copy anything, or let's turn a blind eye to the things Apple copies, just because they're a little more innovative than Google.<p>People need to wake up and see that ALL companies copy and base their technology on something else, but even when they do copy it, it's usually not a 100% carbon copy, but a derivative technology (think iOS 5 notification system), and <i>that's</i> how technology evolves.

&#62;And yes, there are some who will argue that there are no “worthy patents”, that the entire U.S. patent system should be simply abolished.<p>I like how Gruber conflates patents in general with software patents: as if you can't have one without the other.

He has to turn comments off on Daring Fireball or else he would be called out as an Apple fanboy/lobbyist after posts like this. Plenty of companies are willing to compete by creating better products rather than taking their competition to court. The iPhone is getting pushed aside by Android and they are playing dirty to stop it. Unless you can point to some novel technology that Apple should control because it was truly new and different, then Android should be able to compete. Just calling it "competitive" rather than offense and defense is a political tactic that tries to make Google look just as bad as the other guys, or conversely make Apple look just as good as the others. This is not a valid comparison. Combative patent lawsuits are not a requirement for successful businesses. There is a major difference between companies that choose to be litigious to stifle competition rather than focus on creating better products at a cheaper price. Buying a patent portfolio in order to stifle innovation rather than to enable you to create new or better products goes against the purpose of the patent system as it is described in the constitution:<p>"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."<p>They should have pooled these billions to create a massive patent reform campaign. It probably would have been cheaper and more effective in the long run.

So the summary is... Google comes across as whining...?<p>The thing is, with a title like "More of Google and Patents", I can't quickly tell that a link in my RSS feed is headed to daringfireball.<p>There is a nice Chrome plugin I just found called "Blocker", however, so that just put a final end to that.