04.24.12
Google Does Not Help Put an End to Software Patents, Just Android Cases
Summary: Google continues to fight against Oracle, but at the same time Google helps the USPTO, which is the root of the problem
TWITTER DID the reasonable thing (given the circumstances) and based on the will of engineers, Google might follow suit one day, even though the problem, as shown before, is that Google hired a lot of lawyers, to whom more patent mess is simply a work preference.
“It’s never good riddance at Google, not when patent lawyers have their own selfish interests inside the company.”The source of this whole problem is the USPTO. It’s never good riddance at Google, not when patent lawyers have their own selfish interests inside the company. Although Google decided to get get rid of one product (Patent Search Homepage) it is evident that Google is just shuffling a little bit while taking the same mess to the EPO. To quote: “We’re redirecting the old Patent Search homepage to google.com to make sure everyone is getting the best possible experience for their patent searches. Over the past few months, we’ve been making updates and improvements to the Patent Search functionality on google.com—not only are you able to search the same set of U.S. patents with the same advanced search options, the new experience loads twice as fast as the old Patent Search homepage, contributes to a unified search experience across Google, and sports Google Doodles as well. The team looks forward to including patents from other countries soon, and will be rolling out additional features to Patent Search on google.com in the future.”
In other words, Google is still helping the same system which is punishing Android and Linux. In some sense, Google does even more evil by extending that patent system aide to more countries, for profit, as usual. Ken Hess, who has been baiting Android in his blog, says that “Google should have found a Java alternative. But software should not be patented”. Groklaw continues helping Google [1, 2, 3, 4] while “Oracle’s Copyright Case v Google Takes a Big Hit”, but one must not forget Google’s reluctance to squash patents as a whole. Google should strike at the root by ending the USPTO’s participation, not just for Android but for software as a whole. Google is said to be spending a record amount of money on lobbying (see today’s news), but what ever happened to an ambition to eliminate software patents? If Google wants to do good — not just do “no evil” — then it will actually use its lobbying power for good causes. One might blame the Hubris at Google, the company which, as Fernando Cassia puts its, “knows better” than those mere peons who “play” in its online “playground”. To quote: “Many people who thought they could get away with running the old GMail user interface despite contant nagging to “switch to the new look” have quickly discovered that the almighty Google has decided it knows better, and proceeded to force everyone to the new. UX designers are ‘humbled’, but not for long…
“…Google has decided it knows better, and proceeded to force everyone to the new.”
–Fernando Cassia“Nine months ago when the GMail New Look was being introduced, Jason Cornwell, UX designer for GMail said in his Twitter account that he was “humbled” by the response from users. If we take the dictionary´s definition of the word we get “Made low; abased; rendered meek and submissive; penitent”. Hmmm, in other words, it looks like an “Epic fail” to me. So, they learned from past mistakes, right? Wrong.”
GMail also suffered downtimes recently, proving to people that Fog Computing means computing you can’t rely on. Google is trying to convince governments to walk into this trap (downtime and handover of citizen data to a private company), which makes its lobbying not at all benign. To earn more respect from the public Google will need to start showing that it antagonises — not supports — the patent offices around the world. █
walterbyrd said,
April 24, 2012 at 3:42 pm
If I know what is already patented, I might be able to a patent lawsuit against me.
And that would be a good thing.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
April 24th, 2012 at 4:16 pm
Yesterday a colleague told me about a biology patent that’s 40 pages long and covers just about anything conceivable in a whole area (field-specific). He said it’s a US patent which deserves to be invalided, but who would bother? Right now this patent is used as a deterrence tool/tactic which has just prevented him (my friend) from getting a massive contract. Investors see the stockpiles of patents and avoid investing. Not only software patents are a problem.
Patents are protectionism, they’re a monopoly, they are by all economic standpoints “bad”.
People also used to say that old-style “slavery” was beneficial. But we left those lies behind. We grew up, we moved forward.