In a bid to beef up its patent war chest, search engine giant Google has acquired several patents from International Business Machines (IBM).

According to an update made to the US Patents and Trademarks Office patent assignment database, Google has acquired a total of 217 patents from IBM, V3 reports.

The database revealed that 188 of the 217 patents were granted patents while 29 of them were pending patent applications. The exact nature of the patents has not been revealed but the patents cover several topics like data caching, blade servers, presentation software, video conferencing and email management among others.

Since Android's growth skyrocketed past every other rival, Google, which has a comparatively weak patents portfolio, has been targeted with lawsuits by its rivals, including Apple, Microsoft and Oracle.

The company has been busy increasing its patent might through acquisitions and bid to acquire Motorola for $12 billion is seen as a move towards this purpose. The acquisition will give it access to more than 17,000 patents related to mobile and wireless technology.

Cnet points out that some of the patents in the new batch that Google acquired from IBM are related to databases, which might help it with its patent battle against enterprise database maker Oracle.