Google grabs 1,000 IBM patents in troll wars
Google has snapped up a portfolio of 1,030 granted patents formally owned by one-time PC behemoth IBM.
Having tried and failed to do the same with a 6,000-strong portfolio built and owned by networking outfit Nortel, which eventually went to a high-bidding consortium fronted by Apple, RIM and Nokia, Google has strengthened it position in the patent troll wars currently raging in Technoland with the acquisition.
According to SEO by the Sea, the impressively broad batch of patents include those covering data mining prediction, automatic document evaluation, web-based querying, search engine ranking and methods for detecting duplicate documents. The list includes registered patents for both hardware and software and will have cost the search engine giant a pretty penny, although financial dealings have not been revealed.
