Would it be outrageous to ask them to slap an MIT (or equivalent) license on some of the 51,000+ patents that they hold that are somewhat "expected behaviors" these days and aren't critical to their infrastructure? In my mind it would be an incredible PR move and would probably inhibit some of my hesitations of trusting Google.
Google hasn't ever sued anyone for infringing any patent at all unless they've sued Google first. At least, I can't find a single news report in the fifteen year history of the company about it.
If Google put out a free license for all their patents, they'd be unable to strike back when unethical companies sue them over garbage patents. If you're big enough to get on their radar, you can ask for a cross-license agreement.
Not technically, but if I recall, during the Motorola acquisition, when the terms of the deal included requiring Google's okay to do any patent lawsuits while the acquisition was pending, Motorola started several patent lawsuits non-defensively.
Moto went after Apple and Microsoft that were threatening and trolling and suing Android vendors. Those cases were clearly defensive.
But they were surely trolling cases fought with garbage patents on Moto's side. Google grossly overestimated the quality of Motorola's portfolio and was blinded by the sheer number of mostly worthless patents Moto had.
Well I supposed that was my underlying question. I understand that Google has taken the position where they're effectively holding the patents in good faith, but my question is if it would be beneficial for them to open license them so smaller companies could find them cheaply in a discovery for a patent infringement case so nonsense troll cases like the new law seems to be trying to fight could be more effective or whether it would be better to let google safeguard them just in case. (Possibly my longest run-on sentence ever)
