Article:
http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/03/googles-promise-not-to-assert-10.html
This article overviews Google being quite stingy in their pledge in the open source patent pool. Basically, Google has pledged to not sue open source a total of 10 patents. You might think, wow that's really kind of Google to 'donate' 10 patents for open source code writers to use in their development. But let's think about other companies who have pledged in this pool: IBM pledged 500 and Sun approximately 1,600.
10 really isn't that big of a number. It's such a small fraction of Google's 17,000+ patents they actually own. 17,000 is just the number Google has published, it still has a number of patents that are currently in transaction or not formally reassigned until assertion in court. In my previous entry, I talk about Microsoft's Patent Tracker, a database which allows ANYONE to search through ALL of Microsoft's patents. With Google's pledge of 10 patents to open source pool, I have a feeling that Google will not be making any strides like Microsoft and allow for people to 'google' their patents.
It is true that this 10 patents are just Google's initial contribution to the pool. I wonder if they will pledge any more patents in the future, but I think there are dim chances.
Thoughts?
Good post Alisha. I wrote about the same thing this week, and I agree. Google is being very stingy with their "donation" and I thought it was interesting Mueller called it a "PR stunt" because it really was not that generous.
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