Multinational technology giant Google stated on July 24, Friday, that it will give away two patents per start-up for free to fend off patent trolls. The company is known for its long battle against patent trolls and its latest decision to provide free patents to start-ups will surely intensify the war.
According to The Australian, the free patents may be kept by start-ups as long as they will remain in the License On Transfer (LOT) network, a patent cross-licensing group established last year that do not ask for royalty fees. The group includes companies like Canon, SAP, Newegg and Dropbox and it was created to keep the fight against patent trolls.
Although joining the LOT network will require membership fees, Google will waive the dues for the first two years of the newbies' involvement in the group.
However, start-ups were not the only ones being victimized by patent trolls, even big companies are being targeted by these entities. These trolls do anything and approach everyone as long as they can extract income from their prey.
Thus, the current effort of the tech giant is a great help especially to "budding newcomers," according to TechSpot. The two patent freebies will be called "Google Patent Starter Program." Nevertheless, not all start-ups can grab this offer.
According to Google, the offer is only good for 50 qualified developers and start-ups. This would mean that interested firms have a limited time to apply for the patent program.
In order to qualify for the said program, TechCrunch said the companies should have at least $500,000 to $20 million revenue in 2014, according to Herald Sun. After the company submitted its application, Google will allow the applicant to select two of the five families of patents.
Meanwhile, the multinational tech company stated its reason for helping the newcomers. According to Google, their compassion for the start-ups is one of their ways to remember their roots. At the same time, they praised the start-up culture because of their "great ideas...passion and the long hours" that they are sacrificing to come up with "resulting innovation and technology" that will eventually benefit the entire planet.
This is not the first time that Google is pushing an anti-patent troll campaign. Last April, the tech giant opened an "experimental patent marketplace," where it would be easier for firms to offer patents to the multinational tech company. This is Google's way to prevent the trolls from having the patents.