There was a plan to limit certain litigation practices of firms on buying patents and suing other companies for infringement. The new plan, which Members of Congress and President Obama were brewing, involved a review of already issued patents.
During the late 1990s and after the dot-com boom, there were patents which were wrongfully issued by the patent office, according to Google. Two years ago, Google and other top patent-holding companies agreed to pay higher fees. The condition for this was that Congress should let the US Patent and Trademark Office handle the backlog and scrutinize new applications more completely. Congress did not seem to agree; instead, it held back up to US$148 million, which caused companies such as Google to cry foul.
Google acquired a total of 17,000 patents. This was worth about US$12.5 billion, excluding staff, acquisition cost, etc.
One of its patents concerning Motorola could cost it a lot. Last April, US District Judge James Robart ruled in favor of Microsoft on a squabble over patents on Motorola with Google. The ruling said that Microsoft owed Google about US$1.8 million, which was lower than Motorola's asking price of US$4 billion.
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