The most surprising part of this is that they didn't spring for an extra patent.

I've always wondered why everyone puts so much emphasis on the number of patents a company has. Not all patents are created equal. It seems like it would be hard to accurately assess the value of thousands of patents in any reasonable length of time. Did Google research every one of these patents or just buy all of IBM's patents associated with the mobile industry?

2^10 - 1 patents by coincidence, or as it's a fun number?

Hard to believe they needed a set of patents that numbered exactly 1023. So they either bought too many, or not enough, and are playing with shareholders' money. Must be nice to have that much money to play games with.