I stumbled upon the news today that Xerox is suing Google and Yahoo! for patent infringement on search technology.

Did they just find out about that patent? I mean, was it hidden in a drawer somewhere for all these years? weren’t they supposed to be the ‘document company’?

That got me to dig a little deeper: from a very superficial view of their market evaluation over time, the company hasn’t been this bad since the early 80’s, yeah you read that right “80’s”, not even the various bubbles and recessions in between did as much damage.

A little more digging shows that S&P recently degraded Xerox ratings to “brink of junk” territory (and I’m quoting the Wall Street Journal here, not my words) early this month (Feb 2010) following their acquisition of Affiliated Computer Services Inc. the week before (for 5.6B$.. and Xerox market cap today is 8B$… yeah, fishy).

So, let me get this straight: Xerox has one of the most advanced and prolific research labs in the history of innovation (PARC) where things like window-based graphical user interfaces, the mouse, ethernet and the laser printer were invented.

Yet, they failed to capitalize on *any* of those inventions (not even the laser printing one which really feels like a no brainer to me).

And now they sue Google and Yahoo (but hey, not Microsoft! go figure) for patent infringement? on search? 10 years later?

I have a generally moderate position on software patents (I think there are a few genius ones that do deserve their temporary monopoly), but I feel the problem is not in the concept of rewarding innovation (which I strongly support) but in the way the system has turned around and now it’s used to abuse and harass way more than to protect investment.

Xerox is nothing but the poster child of failure to capitalize from its own innovation and, frankly, resorting to the judiciary system to compensate for it shouts managerial incapacity to my ears.

Not only that, but it gives off a sense of utter desperation: one thing is for two directly competing businesses to sue each other trying to get any minimum advantage. It’s not pretty, but it’s understandable (it’s a prisoner’s dilemma scenario where cease-fire and moral-high-ground are inherently unstable).

Completely different case when a company facing difficulties is trying to compensate by milking somebody else’s cash cow for no other reason than they thought about it too but could not (or did not want to) profit from it when they did. This is no prisoner’s dilemma, this is no unavoidable escalation: this feels no different than any other patent troll that feed off as parasites on the fact that having “filed” an idea first can give them a temporary monopoly on it, no matter how obvious it is for others to come up with the same solution when faced with the same problem.

Shame on you, Xerox: you were a company that I have admired and respected greatly over the years. So sad now to think of you as a desperate patent troll.

UPDATE: apparently, they are not new to waking up late in the game and using suing as a measure to compensate for their managerial inadequacy to capitalize on their own invention. Still, pretty sad overall.