Google Buys Some Java Patents Off IBM
September 15, 2011
Google has bought what appears to be another 1,023 patents from IBM, a transfer recorded by the US Patent and Trademark Office Wednesday and noticed by Bloomberg, which said Google bought them on August 17…
The PTO also transferred 1,030 patents from IBM to Google in July after Google lost the auction for 6,000-odd Nortel patents to the combined might of Apple, Microsoft, RIM, Ericsson, Sony and EMC and their $4.5 billion.
The blog SEO by the Sea flipped through the latest IBM haul and says the batch includes a bunch of Java and scripting-based patents.
Whether any of them can defuse Oracle’s massive Java infringement suit against Google and its Android operating system is unclear.
Otherwise the blog says "the range of inventions is pretty broad, including desktop and server hardware, computer security, database processes, circuit design, parallel database systems and architecture, user authentication, credit card/smartcard testing." There are also some phone and wireless-based patents as well as web and search-related patents.
The blog also says most of them appear to be original to IBM but a few started out with Cognos, the Canadian BI house IBM acquired in 2007.
Nobody’s saying what Google paid in either case.