Google today announced that it will purchase Motorola Mobility for $12.5Billion. This decision comes on the heels of the Nortel patent auction where Google had missed out on the erstwhile Canadian telecom giant’s assets. With the purchase of Motorola Mobility, Google now owns about 17000 patents in the wireless domain. This number is almost three times the patents in the Nortel patent auction. Motorola Mobility was formed earlier this year when Motorola hived off its operating units into separate entities-Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions. It is extremely reasonable to state that Motorola Mobility has a fairly large number of essential patents relating to wireless technologies and hence Google can safely develop wireless hardware based on the Android platform and compete more closely with Apple, HP, and Microsoft. It is fairly reasonable to state that Motorola Mobility has very few number of patents relating to use of a touch screen based device.
In our opinion, the acquisition of Motorola Mobility may help Google defend itself and its partners (like HTC/ or Samsung) from lawsuits from Apple, Microsoft or HP (or any combination thereof) related to the Android platform.
Google buys Motorola Mobility for $12.5Billion
Although its entry into the patent-war big leagues didn’t start out very smoothly, perhaps Google is better off now with the IBM and Motorola portfolios than with the Nortel patents. It will certainly have more patents at its disposal now than if it had bid higher than Pi at the Nortel auction.
‘Better off’ is arguable. The reason is that not all patents are equal-some are litigation grade, some are licensing grade and some are not worth the annual maintenance fee paid for. Perhaps this is why, Google is looking at InterDigital’s portfolio. See http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-26/interdigital-appreciates-50-with-apple-google-rush-for-patents-real-m-a.html
In the thousands of patent acquired by the purchase of Motorola patents, only a few (<100) families are essential patents that relate to 3G.