> This is not correct. You're thinking of the Novell patents. Google did make a bid on the Nortel patents, but was not offered a place within Rockstar.
Jesus. Do you even read your own source before posting? The author seems just as confused as you are, since he's the one posting the Novell comments, and saying it's actually about Nortel, when it's not.
From your own source, here's what Microsoft said:
> Google says we bought -- Novell -- patents to keep them from Google. Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no.
> “A joint acquisition of the Novell patents that gave all parties a license would have eliminated any protection these patents could offer to Android against attacks from Microsoft and its bidding partners. Making sure that we would be unable to assert these patents to defend Android — and having us pay for the privilege — must have seemed like an ingenious strategy to them. We didn’t fall for it.”
Joining Microsoft to buy those patents would've made those patents useless for Google in the fight against Microsoft. Google is trying to buy up patents to defend against Microsoft. They can't do that if they can't assert those patents against Microsoft.
If I may try an analogy, say someone is coming at you with a knife, and you have nothing to defend yourself than a toy gun, and that person knows it's a toy gun. How useful is that gun threatening going to be to scare the guy with the knife away. Pretty useless no? Well that's the same thing with the Novell patents.
I did read it, that's why I posted it. It seems pretty clear to me. Google could've, y'know, joined them. Simple really. Surely a better idea than weaponising them? If you really believe that Google would have used them 'defensively', then you are either naive or delusional. Google knew what they were doing and knew what the ramifications of their actions would be.
Actually, Google was not offered to join the Rockstar consortium. They were offered to participate in a joint bid on the Novell portfolio (which they declined), but not -- as far as we know -- the Nortel portfolio.
I think the confusion arose when Google complained about multiple firms ganging up to win the Nortel auction, and Microsoft shot back that they'd have invited Google into the gang too if it hadn't snubbed them during the Novell auction. All PR posturing on both sides, of course, but prone to sow confusion.
For crying out loud. Will people stop confusing Nortel with Novell!!
That was about Novell patents - different company, and it all happened about a year earlier before Nortel thing went down. Completely different situations. Stop confusing them. I see this misinformation spread everywhere when there's a story about Rockstar.
To be honest, it's come up so often and is used so many times by those defending Rockstar, that I'm starting to think it's actually on a PR sheet somewhere.
> Google was offered a seat in Rockstar, they also placed a bid, and so on. They didn't want to.
Of course they didn't want to. Why would they want to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to buy a bunch of patents they couldn't actually use against any of their main competitors? All it would have bought them is a hole in their pockets (because who would have bought the patents from them if the entire industry had already been immunized to them?), and Apple and Microsoft would then have just bought a different set of patents to sell to trolls expecting for them to be used against Google.
Buying overly broad patents is paying the Danegeld. Once they know you pay the Danegeld you never get rid of the Dane.
What exactly do you expect Rockstar to do when several Android OEMs are infringing on their patents without paying for it?