Everybody is so greedy these days. Everyone wants to find a quick fix of money for anything that makes some.

seriously the patent process needs to fucking change, and change fast.



for god sakes 10 different people can prob come up with the same idea that are similiar to eachother.



i mean unless its a blatant copy....



for christ sakes.

Hard to believe, but one can actually make a decent living by having the foresight to develop patentable ideas that the big boys don't have the minds to exploit (since it's usually just outside of their core competancy) and license them back to those large, slow corporations. There's nothing wrong with this practice, and with reasonable royalty rates in place, no one gets hurt. 8) And before anyone disputes this, I also speak as an AAPL stockholder, so... chill dudes.

I don't feel the least bit sorry for Apple. Apple has sued many to 'protect their name' and 'protect their IP'. Several of those cases were way over reaching IMO. I'm a shareholder too.

I agree that the patent system must change, and I think there is a tremendous amount of opportunity for Apple if they decided to lead in that direction. The US patent system is outdated. It fails to address the acceleration of technology. It is doing more harm than good, especially in the pharma industry.

Most patents that are challenged end up being invalidated. But there's no quarantee.

I wonder why MS agreed to pay $60 million? That seems to be a lot, considering tha they aren't directly involved in a business that needs them. They could have made changes to the software.

Apple is in a different position. They are far more dependant on those patents.

Now, if I were the kind of person who believed in conspiracies, I would say that MS was being very clever in paying out that Royalty.

$60 million means nothing to them. The legal costs would have been less.

But, by agreeing to that sum for what MS does, sets a standard for future payments.

Future payments means Apple. If Apple loses, it could easily mean several times that.

In today's patent and business climate you're not successful unless someone is suing you. Success draws lawsuits.

The patent system is horribly broken. I read somewhere - been a while now, I forget where - that the current policy on patents is to grant them, then let the courts sort it out. A policy which I suppose can be interpretted to mean the government doesn't have the will/money to do the research to decide whether patent applications are valid so they'll just let interested parties figure it out after the fact.

On the one hand, this technique generates expensive lawsuits - a case of "if you can afford it, you can defend your patent". On the other hand, it keeps the patent office from doing lots of needless research on patents that no one cares about.

- Jasen.