Patent Purchase Promotion – An experimental Marketplace by Google for patent purchase

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Jun 4th


Google is an American company which deles with Internet-related products and services. These services include software, online advertising, search and more. An online advertising is the company’s biggest profit maker. The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Today Google is an economic giant and a great company to work for. Today we are going to talk about the latest purchase made by this company. We are going to talk about how Google announced Patent Purchase Promotion Program, and how that would affect business owners.

This new novelty from Google will probably be welcomed and put to good use. Google seems to come up with new ideas quickly, and always has something up its sleeve. This time it is the Patent Purchase Promotion, who knows what’s next to come?

But first thing’s first. Let’s see how this new novelty will affect businesses and what’s the biggest concern regarding this new experimental marketplace.

Google announcement (April 27th, 2015)

Google has announced Patent Purchase Promotion Program on 27th April 2015. It is an experimental marketplace through which Google is making an effort to remove current friction in the patent market. Through this program, businesses will be able to sell their patents to Google.

Patent owners usually sell their patents for various reasons. Sometimes in a need to raise money or sometimes may be to point their business towards a new direction. However in the current marketplace they get caught up with patent trolls. Sometimes even get stuck up with lawsuits which result in loss of efforts and money to original patent owners. Google has thus attempted to ease the current situation in the patent market with this program.

As per Google public blog, they will try to buy as many patents as possible to remove current friction patent marketplace and IP landscape.

What are patent trolls?

Patent trolls earlier known as non-practicing entities (NPE’s) is a person or a company who instead of inventing their product, buy other people’s property and license it to their name. NPE’s are not considered as patent trolls. They offer licenses for patented technologies in advance to individual inventors, university research laboratories, development firms and licensing agents. Patent trolling is a big problem for intellectual property landscape and affects small businesses and individuals who have no way to fight against the threats from patent trolls. A study from PricewaterhouseCoopers says that there is a rise in patent lawsuits filed on account of patent trolls. It is 67% currently. It was 28% five year ago, so three times higher. Though most of these cases either get dismissed or settled out of court, those that do go to trial often end in victories for the trolls — largely because the cases are being filed in troll-friendly courts.

How the Patent Purchase program will work:

Google has announced a new strategy where the company will buy patents from sellers who are willing to sell before patent trolls can get hold of it. On Google public blog, they have mentioned that this program will start from May 8th, 2015 and will run till May 22nd, 2015. Google will open a streamlined portal where patent owners who are willing to sell their patents to Google will upload patent details. The portal will then be closed, and Google will review all entries between May 23rd and June 22nd, 2015. Google then will contact patent owners by June 22nd, 2015 about purchasing their patent. Google will work with diligence and do a short transaction discussion regarding the patent with patent owners. After final agreement process, payment to patent owners will be done by Google through ACH bank transfer by late August.

Google has advised sellers to speak with an attorney to make sure to understand the program before participating. In order to streamline the process, Google has limited the patent submissions to US patents only. However, Google will see what level of interest they get in the program and might accommodate foreign asset transaction in future iterations.

Good or Bad:

After going through Google side of Patent Purchase, does it look like an effort to defeat patent troll or an attempt to buy patents quickly from small companies who do not have enough resources to sell their patents to non-trolls? Either way, it is beneficial to small companies or individual who have great inventions. They can see it as an opportunity for themselves in case they are willing to sell and still don’t have to struggle with current patent troll threats. In a few upcoming months, we will get to know the results of this experiment. Till then let’s wait and see!!!

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