谷歌专利大战喜获摩托罗拉奇兵驰援

    美国司法部（the Justice Department）本周一批准了谷歌（Google）以125亿美元收购摩托罗拉移动（Motorola Mobility）的交易。同时美国司法部也对谷歌发出了严厉警告，要求谷歌不得滥用从交易中获得的17,000项专利。可见，谷歌只是极为勉强地通过了司法部的调查。同一天，欧盟（the European Union）也批准了这笔收购。

    美国司法部在一份声明中表示，将密切关注谷歌，看它是否存在将所购得的专利用于“潜在的反竞争用途”的迹象。谷歌在申请专利时应秉承“公平、合理和非歧视性条款”。针对这一点，司法部的声明将谷歌的承诺与苹果（Apple）和微软（Microsoft）等公司进行了客观地对比，称谷歌的承诺比后两者更“含糊”。尽管如此，但美司法部并没有找到驳回这次收购的理由，不过它警告道，如果谷歌胆敢越线，司法部将“毫不迟疑地采取适当的强制措施。”

    这次收购的目的完全是为了专利，谷歌从一开始就没有掩饰这一点。科技公司通过购买专利来避免竞争对手利用手头的专利向自己发起知识产权诉讼的做法早已蔚然成风。科技巨头们已经围绕着专利展开了一场混战，各企业抓住一切机会向对手发难。法官和企业高管们对科技创新的决定作用也变得越来越突出。

    美国司法部也批准了微软、苹果和黑莓手机制造商RIM向已破产的电子通讯设备厂商北电网络（Nortel）购买专利的交易。司法部还同意了微软和苹果购买Novell公司的专利。几家公司均表示不会利用专利来阻止竞争对手推出新产品，也不会为了排挤竞争对手，而对自己的专利人为地收取高额专利费。摩托罗拉移动生产的手机和平板电脑安装的是谷歌的安卓（Android）操作系统。因此等到这项交易结束后，谷歌将向摩托罗拉移动的竞争对手，也就是其他所有使用安卓系统的厂商征收专利费。

    《21世纪的创新》（Innovation for the 21st Century）一书的作者、罗格斯大学（Rutgers University）法学院教授、反垄断专家迈克尔•卡利尔指出，怎样才叫“人为地索取高额专利费”，这个问题很难界定，可能最终还是要诉诸法律才能找到答案。而且这还只是众多专利问题之一，因为专利纠纷还涉及反垄断问题。卡利尔在接受电子邮件采访时表示：“法律并没有现成的工具来分析一套专利组合的建立将带来哪些妨碍竞争的危害。目前为止，司法部门在专利纠纷上还没有一个清晰的框架可以套用，”在审批专利交易时，“司法部很大程度上要依赖企业的自愿声明。”

    The Justice Department on Monday gave Google (GOOG) the go-ahead to complete its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility (MMI). Judging by the stern warnings the DOJ issued, and its criticisms of Google's promises to not misuse any of the the 17,000 patents it is acquiring in the deal, it appears that the company might have just barely made it through the investigation. The European Union also approved the merger on Monday.

    The DOJ said in a statement that it would be watching Google for any signs of "potential anticompetitive use" of its patents. It must license its patents on "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms." The statement compared Google's commitments on that score unfavorably with those made by Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT). Google's promises were "more ambiguous" than those made by the other companies, it said. Nevertheless, the DOJ couldn't find a basis on which to deny the merger. But it warned that if Google steps over the line, the agency "will not hesitate to take appropriate enforcement action."

    The acquisition is all about patents, as Google has said from the beginning. It's part of a trend of tech companies buying patents to defend themselves against intellectual property lawsuits filed by competitors with their own stash of patents. The whole thing is a huge mess, with companies suing each other left and right, and technological innovation increasingly being determined by officers of the court as well as by corporate officers.

    The DOJ also approved deals for Microsoft, Apple, and Blackberry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) to buy patents from Nortel, a bankrupt maker of telecommunications equipment. And it OK'd purchases by Microsoft and Apple of patents owned by Novell. The companies have agreed not to use patents to prevent competitors from introducing new products and to refrain from charging artificially high prices for patent licenses in order to keep competitors out of a market. Motorola Mobility makes phones and tablets that use Google's Android operating system, so when the deal is closed, Google will be licensing software to its competitors -- all the companies that use Android.

    The question of what constitutes artificially high prices is ambiguous, and might end up being worked out in court. That's just one issue in dealing with patents as they relate to antitrust matters, says Michael A. Carrier, author of "Innovation for the 21st Century" and a professor and antitrust expert at Rutgers University School of Law. The law "does not have a ready-made toolkit for analyzing anticompetitive harm from the creation of patent portfolios," he said in an email interview. "Collections of patent portfolios have not (yet) led to a clear framework that the agencies could apply." In approving the patent deals, "the DOJ put a lot of faith in the voluntary statements."