Google | Google Asserts That Property Rights Are Anti-Competitive

Written by Scott Cleland

Google recently complained in a blog post called " When patents attack Android " that it is the victim of a vast anti-competitive conspiracy to enforce property-rights against Google's fast-growing Android mobile operating platform. Google goes on to charge that competitors are wielding "bogus patents" "as a weapon to stop" Google's innovation. Google specifically is complaining it is anti-competitive that a group of some of its competitors outbid Google to own Nortel's roughly 6,000 patents.

Prior to the Nortel patent auction, Google made a high-profile "stalking horse" bid of about $900 million for the Nortel patents that it now complains are largely "bogus." Google also declared after this initial bid: "we hope this portfolio will... create a disincentive for others to sue Google..." If Google was not so patently deceptive in its public relations, Google would have entitled its recent post: " When Google attacks patents ."

Behind Google's feigned indignation is an old legal adage: when the law is not on your side you argue the facts, when the facts are not on your side you argue the law, but when neither the law nor facts are on your side " you pound the table. Take note: Google is loudly pounding the table.

Effectively, Google is implying that vast numbers of existing patents approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) are bogus and thus anti-competitive. Even more bizarrely, Google is effectively arguing that the constitutional right of inventors to patent and own inventions via the due process of the USPTO somehow turns anti-competitive if and when patent owners choose to exercise their legal rights to defend their property in court against Google infringement. Google has a patently self-serving view of antitrust law .

At core, Google is furiously throwing stones at competitors from its glass house.

First, arguably no other Fortune 500 company has ever been more hostile to others' property rights than Google.

To go public in 2004, Google had to settle an Overture patent infringement claim for $250 million over the core invention underlying Google's Adwords auction process.

In 2005, Google began scanning