Google buys another thousand IBM patents

In July, Google bought 1030 patents from IBM to bolster its patent portfolio. Now, Google has done it again with a second purchase of, this time, 1022 patents from IBM. The transaction, which appears to have taken place on 17 August, was discovered by the SEO by the Sea blog, and was confirmed by a Google spokesperson talking to a Bloomberg reporter.

The patents in the new deal include mobile patents such as Cellular telephone communication and Location updating, and search patents such as Audible presentation of a web page, dynamic hyperlink text and balancing browser bandwidth use. There are also Java-related patents including "Mapping Enterprise Java Bean attributes to a database schema", and scripting patents such as "Scripting language blocks to support multiple scripting languages in a single web page".

It is estimated that – with this new transaction, the acquisition of Motorola Mobility, other patent purchases and Google's own patents – the search engine company now has around 20,000 patents in its arsenal. At the start of the year, Google had only 809 patents.

Google has begun deploying some of those 20,000 patents in defence of Android partners by transferring patents to them. It moved nine patents to HTC earlier this month to assist it in its defence against Apple; the patents were previously owned by Motorola Mobility and OpenWave Systems. HTC has already deployed these patents in a new lawsuit accusing Apple of infringement. What its plans are for the patents which aren't related to mobile technology is currently unclear.

See also:

• Google accuses Apple, Oracle and Microsoft of an Android patent war, a report from The H.
• Google to support HTC in patent fight with Apple, a report from The H.

(djwm)