Google made its most recent move in the ongoing great game of acquiring tech patents. The company purchased a bundle of more than a thousand patents from I.B.M., according to a report in the New York Times.
Reiterating a strategy long-espoused by the tech giant, an e-mail statement from Google said that the purchase was relevant to its "business needs," stressing, "Bad software patent litigation is a wasteful war that no one will win." In short, the idea is that preemptively buying patents will mean law suits are less likely down the line.
"Google is a relatively young company, and although we have a growing number of patents, many of our competitors have larger portfolios given their longer histories," Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel, wrote in April.
The purchase is a coup for Google, which lost out to a large block of Nortel patents last month that was eventually picked up by a consortium of its competitors for a staggering $4.5 billion cash bid.
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