Google Unveils Patent Purchase Program

Patent holders can tell Google about the patents they're willing to sell and the expected price through the portal, the company said on its blog.

The Patent Purchase Promotion program will remain open from May 8 to May 22, the company said on Monday.

Google said it will let the submitters know of its interest in buying their patents by June 26 and expects to pay the sellers by late August.

Patent owners sell patents for numerous reasons (such as the need to raise money or changes in a company's business direction). Unfortunately, the usual patent marketplace can sometimes be challenging, especially for smaller participants who sometimes end up working with patent trolls. Then bad things happen, like lawsuits, lots of wasted effort, and generally bad karma. Rarely does this provide any meaningful benefit to the original patent owner.

So today we're announcing the Patent Purchase Promotion as an experiment to remove friction from the patent market...

By simplifying the process and having a concentrated submission window, we can focus our efforts into quickly evaluating patent assets and getting responses back to potential sellers quickly. Hopefully this will translate into better experiences for sellers, and remove the complications of working with entities such as patent trolls...

We're always looking at ways that can help improve the patent landscape and make the patent system work better for everyone. We ask everyone to remember that this program is an experiment (think of it like a 20 percent project for Google's patent lawyers), but we hope that it proves useful and delivers great results to participants.