Judge: Google owes patent troll a 1.36% cut of AdWords' BEELLIONS Patent-holding company Vringo has won a legal victory against Google that could net it hundreds of millions of dollars per year in ongoing royalties from the Chocolate Factory's AdWords online advertising system. According to court documents [PDF] obtained by The Register, Judge Raymond Jackson of the US District Court of the …
Perhaps I am a little slow or something, but have you READ any of that patent? From the abstract:
"The search engine system also employs a collaborative/content-based filter to make continuing searches for information entities which match existing wire queries and are ranked and stored over time in user-accessible, system wires corresponding to the respective queries."
WTF does that mean???! Perhaps I've worked in the wrong area, but in 15 years in the IT industry I have never even heard of wire queries and system wires, at least not in this context! I presume their not talking about that which connects my headphones to my laptop?!
Just get richer.
Another couple of Caribbean Islands bought up by the the execs of investment firms bankrolling patent trolls. Ok, so the Chocolate Factory got rapped - good news. Who pays ? The customer = us
Did it make the world a better place ?
I'm not against patents per se, but the current system is madness and really just a nice way for lawyers to earn enough to compete with the investment firms income :-)
Round and round we go.
on the other hand, if Google just bought Vringo, with a lock-in clause for say two years in all existing management, then just decided to move their offices to under a bridge, an appropriate place for a troll after all, and make them all spend their days writing out "i must not try to make money off the back of other people's innovation to which I contributed f* all".
Ultimately i don't think any patent should carry on under such circumstances. If you or a a company invents something and uses that invention then the patent stands, if the patent is ever sold it should only stand if the buyer also uses the patent to make something saleable, otherwise it should be discarded.
That way, inventors and investors get their protections but the industry surrounding patents goes away.
Does it really need to be for a financial reward? Me thinks we would still be running around in animal skins beating each other over the heads with clubs if it wasn't for the real inventors who do it because they just can.
I hope that our future generations can throw off the shackles (yes I mean money) which really is created by large institutions and drag our sorry world into a better future for everyone.
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