Google wants to buy your unwanted patents with their latest initiative
Are you brilliant enough to have come up with a patented idea but don’t have the means to utilize or protect it? Tired of people infringing on your ideas and having to deal with expensive legal fees and extensive court procedures to battle it out?
If all of that headache moves you to sell your patent, Google wants to make the process of selling it somewhat easier. Instead of dealing with the strenuous process of finding a buyer for a patent on your own, Google is creating an open submission platform that’ll allow you to submit your patents to them for review. Should Google want to snag it (for whichever price you’re asking) they’ll contact you and whisk you through the process to take it off your hands. You get some good money, they get their technology — everyone’s happy.
Google will open a patent submission form from May 8, 2015 through May 22, 2015. Once the portal closes, they’ll undergo a review process to identify which patents they want to buy. You’ll get an email by June 26th, 2015 letting you know whether Google decided to bite the bullet and buy your patent, and payments are expected to be made to lucky souls by the end of August.
Google says this is to be considered an experimental program and attributed its existence to the result of the lawyer equivalent of their “20% time. If you’re not aware, 20% of a Google engineer’s work time each week can be spent on experimental projects that they’re interested in pursuing. Some of Google’s best apps, services and platforms — such as Gmail and AdSense — are the result of 20% time.
What’ll happen if this takes off? Who knows — perhaps Google will find themselves with a very effective and solid foundation for a Craigslist-like patent marketplace. Whatever the case may be, it’s great that Google is giving people who want to ditch their patents an easy out (even if Google’s biggest reason for doing it is because they simply can’t get enough of them).
[via Google]