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Google Bids $900 million for Nortel Patent Portfolio

In a press release published on Monday, Google has stated that it has put in a $900 million bid for Nortel’s patent portfolio in the company’s bankruptcy auction. This would be the first bid in the case. The interesting thing is that Google claims that it wishes to acquire Nortel’s patents for defensive purposes, so as to avoid litigation and be able to freely develop new products and services.  Google has  been openly critical of the quality of patents for some time.  In the press release, for instance, Google chastizes the Patent Office for issuing “low-quality software patents… which threaten innovation”.  We will assume that the Nortel patents Google wishes to acquire do not fall into this category.. though we are not quite sure about Google’s recently issued patent for the “Google Doodle” disscusssed here previously.