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Inventive warfare创智财富 THIS deal is all about patents. That was the near universal view of Googles announcementthis week that it was taking over Motorola Mobility, a maker of handsets and other devices, for acolossal $12.5 billion. Indeed, the purchase will provide Google with an awful lot of patents:around 17,000 of them issued and another 7,500 pending. They should help Google in itsefforts to get more smartphones and other mobile devices running on its Android operatingsystem. But it could also make the battles over patents nastier and more costly. 这笔交易也是彻头彻尾关于专利的。谷歌本周宣布以高达125亿美元收购手机及相关配件的制造商摩托罗拉移动部门的消息引起了全球关注。此外，此次交易将提供给谷歌大量的专利：大约17，000个已经获得专利权，另外有7，500个正在申请中。这将有助于谷歌拓展其基业以使更多地智能手机和其它移动终端使用安卓操作系统。但这也会使得专利之争更卑劣更烧钱。 A scramble for patents had already begun. In December four companies, including Microsoft andApple, paid $450m for around 880 patents and applications owned by Novell, an ailing softwarefirm. In July those two and four others, including Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry,spent $4.5 billion on 6,000 patents owned by Nortel, a bankrupt Canadian telecoms-equipmentmaker. Before its latest deal, Google bought 1,000 patents from IBM. Firms are also suing eachother. Apple claims its technology has been copied by Samsung and Motorola in their Androidphones. Oracle is suing Google for up to $6 billion, claiming that Android infringes its patents.Microsoft is suing Motorola over Android too. Nokia recently settled a similar quarrel withApple. | 
