Google’s proposed $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility is an “immense mistake” that will do little to help Google defend Android against patent predators, one expert claims. David Martin, founder and CEO of patent consulting firm M-Cam, told Bloomberg in an interview that Motorola already sold off the bulk of its valuable patents. Motorola Mobility still holds more than 25,000 issued and pending patents, but Martin doubts they will be of much use to Google as Android and its partners come under fire from the likes of Apple and Microsoft. Read on for more.
“What they bought is crap, because at the end of the day Motorola sold off its good assets,” Martin told Bloomberg. “Back in the early years, Motorola sold off some MPEG patents to GE in a securitization deal. After that, they took a bunch of the Freescale patents and sold those off.” He continued, suggesting that the patents that might be useful to Google actually have “a huge dependency on Freescale, and Freescale actually has an Apple link.” Martin believes that Google carefully considered the present when working out the Motorola deal, but it wasn’t thorough enough in its considerations of the past. For that reason, the patent expert thinks Google “painted a target” on itself with this deal, and it is now more likely than ever to face an increased number of lawsuits as a result.
[Via Gizmodo]
