Google is launching an experimental portal that allows interested patent holders to sell their patents to the company. The Patent Purchase Promotion is an experimental marketplace for patents.

Patent owners sell patents for numerous reasons (such as the need to raise money or changes in a company?s business direction). Unfortunately, the usual patent marketplace can sometimes be challenging, especially for smaller participants who sometimes end up working with patent trolls. Then bad things happen, like lawsuits, lots of wasted effort, and generally bad karma. Rarely does this provide any meaningful benefit to the original patent owner.

From May 8, 2015 through May 22, 2015, Google will open a portal for patent holders to tell Google about patents they?re willing to sell at a price they set. As soon as the portal closes, Google will review all the submissions, and let the submitters know whether the company is interested in buying their patents by June 26, 2015. Google said it would try to pay for any patent that would have interest for the company by late August.

"By simplifying the process and having a concentrated submission window, we can focus our efforts into quickly evaluating patent assets and getting responses back to potential sellers quickly. Hopefully this will translate into better experiences for sellers, and remove the complications of working with entities such as patent trolls," the company said on its blog.