Google Makes $900 Million Stalking-Horse Bid For Nortel Patents As It Looks To Fend Off Trolls
The patent system is busted. Tech rivals are throwing lawsuits at each other to shoot down competitors instead of trying to win with innovative products. And Google’s had enough of being pushed around.
Today in a blog post, Google has announced that it’s going to help fend off attacks on both itself and ecosystems of projects like Android and Chrome by bidding on the Nortel patent portfolio — a trove of 6,000 valuable patents that relate to a variety of technologies including wireless, 4G, data networking, and more. Which, should Google win them, would be a strong deterrent for any other companies thinking of suing Google or one of its partners.
Google hasn’t won anything yet — there’s still going to be an auction planned for June when other companies will be able to bid above the $900 million stalking-horse bid. Nortel is selling the patents as part of a bankruptcy auction and says that the Google bid “follows a confidential, multi-round bidding process involving several interest companies” — which reportedly included Apple, who could presumably follow up with their own bid in the main auction. Read more...
Windows 8 to include its own Time Machine rival, History Vault
Microsoft is currently working on a new feature for Windows 8 named History Vault, WinRumors has learned.
The feature will allow Windows 8 users to backup files and data automatically using the Shadow Copies function of Windows. According to one person familiar with the company’s plans, the backup feature will include the ability to restore to a specific time or date on the system. Users will also be able to select files and restore them to different timestamps. Read more...
Puppy Linux 5.2.5
Launched on Saturday, version 5.2.5 of the flagship Lucid Puppy Linux distribution--also known as "Lupu"--improves upon the release from early this year with a raft of updates and new features, making it "the most leading-edge Lucid ever," in the project's own words.
Now included in the easy-to-use software, for example, is version 4.1.0 of the Bash shell, replacing the previous version's Bash 3. Version 4.03 of the Syslinux bootloader replaces Syslinux 3, Read more...