AOL Sells Its Patents To Microsoft For $1 Billion: Microsoft Now Owns Netscape IP
Found on Techdirt on Monday, 09 April 2012
The "good news" here is that the patents don't end up in the hands of a pure patent troll, who will do nothing but sue over them. The bad news, of course, is that Microsoft is quite aggressive in suing others for patent infringement anyway, and you can expect some of these patents to start showing up in wasteful, innovation-hindering lawsuits before too long.
Peter Kafka notes that Microsoft basically bought all Netscape assets outside of the name/trademarks, etc.
That's the problem with patents. Long gone is their original intention; today they are nothing more than ammunition for armies of lawyers and trolls who sue the competiton into oblivion or try to extort money without ever having done any development.