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Verizon Strikes Patent Deal with Google to Avoid the Trolls

dgstorm

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Verizon-sign_Bloomberg-304.jpg

I know it sounds like it, but we assure you that headline above is not some sort of late April Fool's joke. Big Red just signed a deal with Google to license a number of their patents. The main goal isn't just to use the technology, but is also to help create a system that pushes patent trolls out of the way. By licensing a number of software patents from Google, Verizon will be able to avoid some of the patent troll companies which do not ever produce a product of any kind.

Both companies have been advocates of reforming the patent system so that patent trolling can be eliminated. Here's a quote with Verizon's statement,

Verizon Signs Patent Licensing Deal with Google to Promote Innovation

I’m delighted to announce that today we signed a patent licensing agreement with Google to lower the risk of frivolous patent litigation.

The Constitution says that the patent system is supposed to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” But in high-tech industries like ours, the patent system can be exploited to get in the way of innovation. High-tech products can implicate thousands of patents, and when patent litigation takes years, costs millions of dollars, and comes long after innovators have launched new products, the Johnny-come-lately owner of a single patent can threaten an entire innovative ecosystem. That’s bad for innovation and bad for American consumers.

Verizon has long championed patent reforms and industry actions that promote innovation. We’re pleased that today’s licensing deal with Google will help reduce the supply of patents that so-called patent trolls can assert against us. We look forward to striking similar deals with other high-tech companies also concerned with the innovation tax that patent trolls often collect. But these deals can’t fix the system by themselves. More needs to be done. We continue to support Congress’s effort to enact meaningful patent litigation reform in the coming year.

It will be interesting to see if Congress actually ever makes any changes to the patent system, but it appears that in the interim, some companies are teaming up to handle things together on their own.

Source: VZW
 
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