Google paid $4B for patents: why the Motorola deal worked out just fine

[Commentary] A closer look at Google’s purchase and sale of Motorola shows the final price of the deal was around $4 billion for a big patent portfolio. That’s a reasonable price to pay in the face of a unreasonable patent system.

The bottom line is that the Motorola patents haven’t always worked out as well as Google might have hoped. But that doesn’t mean buying Motorola was a mistake. The Motorola patent purchase was a sane response to a patent system that is so irrational that all three branches of the US government are now trying to reform it.