Why Would IBM want to sell their patents? And to Google, nonetheless?
Think of it this way – You’re at a garage sale and you see a box of comic books (or records if you are not a comic nut). You buy the box for $20, hoping there is a valuable comic (record) in there. You pull out the important ones and what is left is a box of comics you don’t care about.
IBM has been gobbling up different companies throughout the years and some of the patents are like the odd comic books. Nortel is a great example – IBM had over 6,000 patents that they didn’t need. Therefore in May, they decided to auction off those patents that didn’t pertain to them. Google didn’t win that bidding war.
But , according to SEO by the Sea, IBM last week did find 1,030 patents that they sold to Google for an undisclosed sum. It was a hodge-podge of patents – from fabrication to database structures. These are patents that could keep Google from going to the courts for their Android devices, new products coming out on the market and other threats to future revenue.
It’s also a case of Google picking out the ones they need, then keeping a couple in the back pocket for future need (whether for selling or future projects). A couple of those patents relate to search methods. It will be interesting how that effects other search engines like rival Bing.
We’ll have to wait and see how Google utilizes these patents.