Hello all, here'd my article for reference: http://gigaom.com/2013/03/28/google-donates-patents-to-protect-cloud-software-from-lawsuits/
Somewhat big news! Google is creating what is called a "patent pledge", to attempt to stop patent wars on the cloud and big data developers like those in the mobile industry. This pledge includes 10 patents that are related to their MapReduce technology, which is what their search system is based off.
What this pledge does:
Allows developers to freely use/sell tech using these patents without fearing for lawsuits. The catch is that only projects that are open source, that is that anyone can access them, are allowed to take advantage of this pledge.
Google's aim:
Allow open-software so people can build off of each others work. To me, this seems like an open invitation to collaboration and new tech developments.
Interesting idea:
MapReduce covered a form of parallel processing which is powerful and allows multiples things to be done at the same time, that is, "in parallel." A lot of people were afraid that their patent on the Hadoop tool was going to be too much, but this patent is actually included in the 10, so many of these fears are now assuaged.
What do you think of this move by Google? Good or Bad? Is this even possible or is it too naive? Let me know in the comments below!
I think this is a good move by Google and hopefully other people can follow up with it. The downside is that people may somehow and someway find a way to take advantage of this and ruin everything just like the patent trolls.Hopefully this won't lead to more lawsuits and allow others to gain from this patent and compete fairly with one another.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a P.R. stunt--10 patents is nothing out of the tens of thousands that Google has possession over. Google is arguably one of the most litigious tech firms in Silicon Valley, especially in the way they support OEMs in lawsuits.
ReplyDeleteThis is clearly a Public Relations Stunt like Christopher suggests. 10 patents is nothing for Google! Google just donated this patents to say that they've donated. If they were trying to do some good, they would donate more than 10 patents...
ReplyDelete