Google Adds 152 Patents to Its Non-Assertion Pledge

This is one of those situations where the legal pananoia clips back on itself. Clearly this is not a contract and wouldn't expect to be enforced as one. So the conservative assumption has to be that it carries "little" weight and that Google might change its mind.

Nonetheless, if you imagine the flip side, the legal advice flips too. If you have a company whose employees made a statement to a partner about their intent not to enforce IP rights, you certainly would expect that to be an important bit of evidence in any subsequent trial. It's routine in big companies for employees working with partners and customers to be warned by their legal departments not to make statements like this becuase of the risk involved.

In the real world: I think we have to take this for what it is. It's just a promise, apparently in good faith. Short of legal action by our governments, there aren't any permanent solutions to this problem. This is as good as we're going to get.

IANAL (I just read all of Groklaw as it ran), but: estoppel. If you make big loud public noise saying you won't sue, then people take you at your word, then you sue ... you probably won't do better than "desist", and you may lose entirely.