ITC to investigate Apple, other handset makers over claimed touchscreen patent violations

Maybe they should start an investigation into patent trolls.

Remember when Nokia started the smart phone patent wars and everyone thought that was the worst that could come from patent litigation, mostly because the whole thing appeared to be a zero-sum game.

We're basically seeing this all over again, but instead of 11 tech companies with actual products - we have innumerable entities with nothing to lose and a bunch of myopic, cash hungry apologists who think that unfettered capitalism is normal and not at all harmful to society.

EsquireCats said:

Remember when Nokia started the smart phone patent wars and everyone thought that was the worst that could come from patent litigation, mostly because the whole thing appeared to be a zero-sum game.

We're basically seeing this all over again, but instead of 11 tech companies with actual products - we have innumerable entities with nothing to lose and a bunch of myopic, cash hungry apologists who think that unfettered capitalism is normal and not at all harmful to society.

What “unfettered capitalism” are you referring to? This issue is the direct consequence of intellectual property law, where mere ideas, rather than functional items are called inventions. Your statement places blame on the private sector when root cause is clearly in the public sector. Also, other than black and grey markets, there is nothing even approximating “unfettered capitalism” in any 1st or 2nd world country.

longpath said:

EsquireCats said:

Remember when Nokia started the smart phone patent wars and everyone thought that was the worst that could come from patent litigation, mostly because the whole thing appeared to be a zero-sum game.

We're basically seeing this all over again, but instead of 11 tech companies with actual products - we have innumerable entities with nothing to lose and a bunch of myopic, cash hungry apologists who think that unfettered capitalism is normal and not at all harmful to society.

What “unfettered capitalism” are you referring to? This issue is the direct consequence of intellectual property law, where mere ideas, rather than functional items are called inventions. Your statement places blame on the private sector when root cause is clearly in the public sector. Also, other than black and grey markets, there is nothing even approximating “unfettered capitalism” in any 1st or 2nd world country.

You need to back up your claim before attacking mine.

It certainly rankles when some company starts legal action more than a dozen years after the introduction of a revolutionary device (which presumably has incorporated those patents since inception) when they only recently purchased the patents themselves. It brings to mind Oracle vs Google. But ultimately this is a legally valid approach.