Have you ever read a news story that makes you go, "Huh?" Such was the case last week when I read a seemingly innocuous story in TechCrunch about Google adding new "prior art" query functionality to its Google Patents search tool. On the same day came an announcement that Google was adding millions of documents from the European Patent Office into its new-and-improved Patents function. Exciting news for patent lawyers, to be sure, but so what? Here are two reasons why I find the moves interesting:
- Google has a formal deal with the USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office, the government agency that issues US patents) to provide bulk patent and trademark search data through the Google Patents search tool.
- Many aspects of Google's business model (especially mobile) are reliant on intellectual property (patents). Think of Google's recent purchase of Motorola Mobility- a move made in large part to secure the latter's 17,000 patents.
JUST GOOGLE "USPTO"
Even though the Google Patents search tool has been around since 2006, the tech giant didn't formalize a deal with the USPTO until June of 2010. At that time, the USPTO entered into a no-cost, two-year agreement with Google to make bulk electronic patent and trademark data available to the public. Under this agreement, the USPTO provided Google with existing bulk, electronic files, which Google was happy to host (without modification) for the public free of charge.
Why did the USPTO do such a thing?
"The USPTO does not currently have the technical capability to provide this public information in a bulk machine readable format that is desired by the intellectual property (IP) community."
Well, at least they were honest.
Check out the chummy exchange between Undersecretary of Commerce and head of USPTO David Kappos, and Jon Orwant, Engineering Manager for Google:
Kappos: "The USPTO is committed to providing increased transparency as called for by the President's Open Government Initiative. An important element of that transparency is making valuable public patent and trademark information more widely available in a bulk form so companies and researchers can download it for analysis and research...because the USPTO does not currently have the technical capability to offer the data in bulk form from our own Web site, we have teamed with Google to provide the data in a way that is convenient and at no cost for those who desire it."
Orwant: "We're happy to work with the USPTO to make patent and trademark data more accessible and useful," said Jon Orwant, Engineering Manager for Google. "It's important to make public data easier to gather and analyze. And when the data is free, that's even better."
Kudos to Kappos for at least admitting that the US government is way behind Google in technology (at least in Commerce-I suppose the NSA or the Pentagon would beg to differ).
I'm also glad to see Orwant and Google were at least polite, thanking the government for offering up copious amounts of free data for Google search engines to slice, dice, and of course, rank.
PATENTS ARE A VIRTUE
Patents are usually only granted if an invention is novel and unprecedented. Patent attorneys tasked with proving this rely on "prior art," which constitutes all information that has been made available to the public in any form before a given date that might be relevant to a patent's claims of originality. If an invention has been described in the prior art, a patent on that invention is not valid.¹
According to Google's blog, its new Prior Art Finder identifies key phrases from the text of the patent, combines them into a search query, and displays relevant results from Google Patents, Google Scholar, Google Books, and the rest of the web. Google pledges that it will be "refining and extending" the Prior Art Finder as it develops a better understanding of how to analyze patent claims and how to integrate those results into the "workflow" of patent searchers.
Well that gives me a warm fuzzy, especially if I'm a patent attorney opposing Google in a hotly-contested lawsuit...
Like the one Google's newly-minted Motorola Mobility division filed last week against Apple.
Speaking of Motorola Mobility, Google's $12.5 billion acquisition of the mobile tech company was seen to have been at least in part motivated by its fine collection of 17,000 patents. Before the deal, Google was lagging behind in the patent wars, and has been spending liberally to close that gap.
As Google noted in a press release regarding the acquisition, "Motorola Mobility's patent portfolio will help protect the Android ecosystem."
From whom? Wait a minute, who is one of Google's principle antagonists in the mobile patent wars? Oh yea, Apple.
I wonder how many Apple attorneys are using Google's slick new Prior Art tool even as I write this...
PATENTLY DANGEROUS?
Lest I find myself beating the conspiratorial drum too loudly, it could be that Google is operating completely objectively and transparently, with only the best intentions.
Yes, this could very well be true.
However, given that Google just forked out 22.5 Million Dollars to settle "SafariGate" with the US Federal Trade Commission, a healthy bit of skepticism may be warranted.
Wouldn't you think the case would, at the very least, give the USPTO room for pause? What about the European Union's investigation of alleged privacy policy abuses on the part of Google?
For governments as with humans, I suspect that practicality trumps principle. The moral of the story for all of you budding entrepreneurs out there is simple: build a really cutting-edge product that everyone, including the government, relies on, and there is no limit to what you can achieve.
Heck, the people who are supposed to regulate your industry may even hand over the keys to the Mercedes and let you drive it for them.
Just remember to offer your services to them free of charge, and you'll be fine.
¹ WikiPedia, "Prior Art"