>Google wanted the patents to fight back against Microsoft, since Microsoft is the one probably leveraging the greatest patent tax against Android devices. A joint ownership of the patents would be useless against Microsof. They could leverage them against Apple, or Oracle, or other parties that didn't own them, however, but even that could be to Microsoft's benefit.
Here's the problem: Even if Google won the Novell bid, they would not be able to use the patents as a defense against MS. MS is licensing the patents from Novell, and I think that if any other party bought the patent pool, they would continue to license them from whomever bought the pool. So Google couldn't use them in a defensive manner. They could make life annoying for MS by increasing the fees, but that's about it, especially because if they increased the fees too high, they'd doing the exact same thing that MS is.
Plus, I think that the DoJ's decision to put the patents under GPLv2 and the OIN patent license would have been made regardless of who actually bought the pool, considering that a lot of the patents apply to Linux. So even if Google had won, it's not clear if it would have actually helped them in the end.
I can't believe Microsoft is licensing all of them, otherwise they wouldn't care about them as much. In fact, they probably wouldn't have even bothered to buy them, especially if they thought the DoJ would rule in the way that they did.
The DoJ ruling merely means they can't really leverage those patents against Google to stifle them more, which I'm sure the legal departments of Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle would have loved to do. It means those patents are less of a threat, but it wasn't a win for Google either.
I don't agree that the DoJ would have made the same decision in the case that Google had exclusively won the patents. I think the litigious nature of Apple, Oracle, and Microsoft, especially towards Android, had quite a bit to do with that decision.
I feel like Google is pulling the same thing they pulled with the FCC's 700Mhz Spectrum auction: Highlighting the faults of the system, advocating for consumers, getting some help from the government and trying to get their way without actually paying for it.
>The DoJ ruling merely means they can't really leverage those patents against Google to stifle them more, which I'm sure the legal departments of Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle would have loved to do. It means those patents are less of a threat, but it wasn't a win for Google either.
No. The DoJ ruling means that they can't leverage the patents against Linux. The OIN patent license only applies to Linux code. That doesn't necessarily apply to the Android UI, for example.
That's the primary reason that I think the DoJ would have made the same ruling. It gives the Linux code the same protections that they had with Novell.
Here's the problem: Even if Google won the Novell bid, they would not be able to use the patents as a defense against MS. MS is licensing the patents from Novell, and I think that if any other party bought the patent pool, they would continue to license them from whomever bought the pool. So Google couldn't use them in a defensive manner. They could make life annoying for MS by increasing the fees, but that's about it, especially because if they increased the fees too high, they'd doing the exact same thing that MS is.
Plus, I think that the DoJ's decision to put the patents under GPLv2 and the OIN patent license would have been made regardless of who actually bought the pool, considering that a lot of the patents apply to Linux. So even if Google had won, it's not clear if it would have actually helped them in the end.