Patent indemnification, are you kidding? [LWN.net]

Patent indemnification, are you kidding?

Posted Mar 3, 2010 9:31 UTC (Wed) by mjr (subscriber, #6979)
In reply to: Yay by gdt
Parent article: Apple's patent attack

In the first instance, yes. In the longer term it will depend upon the terms of contracts between the two software suppliers and HTC. For example, did Google and Microsoft warrant that their software was free of encumberences; did they indemnify HTC from I.P claims over the software?

No company in their right mind would do that in this world, so no, very likely not. 'course, Google at least might have an interest in fighting back anyway.

(Log in to post comments)

Patent indemnification, are you kidding?

Posted Mar 3, 2010 14:35 UTC (Wed) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

Actually patent indemnification is a common clause in software contracts - here's one example: http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:3Nifq5Hprs8J:www.cou... (section 56)

There are many other examples - basically software customers don't want to have to defend a patent lawsuit for a software product they bought, so vendors are often willing to include this.

Patent indemnification, are you kidding?

Posted Mar 6, 2010 1:06 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

The easiest way to understand why indemnification does in fact exist is to remember that a deal is a two-way street. If no company in its right mind would indemnify another because it doesn't want to take the risk of a patent infringement, then no company in its right mind would take stuff without indemnification, for the same reason.

But technology does change hands, so one side or the other is taking the risk. Now, when it comes to choosing which side it should be, I think it makes sense in the general case that the supplier of the technology should take the risk, as he probably is in the better position of the two to avoid infringements and know if there are any.