NEW YORK - Google Inc. has bought another 188 U.S. patents and 29 patent applications from IBM Corp., IBM confirmed Wednesday.
Google has been buying patents from IBM and others over the past year to bolster its defenses against lawsuits over its Android smartphone software. It's used by a variety of manufacturers in phones that compete with Apple Inc.'s iPhone.
In the biggest such deal, Google is buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion to get its hands on the patent trove. The Mountain View, Calif., company has also bought more than 1,000 patents from IBM of Armonk, N.Y.
The recent batch of patents acquired from IBM cover a range of technologies used in cellphones. The companies didn't say how much Google paid for them. The transfers were registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last week.
The transfer was first reported by the blog SEO by the Sea, which follows Google.
