hehe you don't have to sell me, i'm very much against the patent system myself.

but you have to be realistic, in today's monetary society, it's about driving technology further, and if you have something new and unique it's important to protect that.
if that were not possible, the "big fish" would just scale down the cost of your new technology and you'd be out of business in no time, effectively hindering progress. because who would want to put time and money in developing his own, new ideas anymore?

i concur with you that that's not a good system, but it's sadly the truth.


i'm completely with you here. the problem is, you gotta change a lot more than just the patent system to make a difference... i'm talking about fundamental changes to society, away from our monetary system towards a resource-based economy. problem is, that's not very likely to happen soon.

although it might happen sooner than most of us think...

edit:
wow, a lot happening in a short time

Of course it's ambiguous. Think it through.

Perhaps they tried to cross-license (multi touch related perhaps) and the romance just didn't work out. Perhaps Nokia legal team researched they actually deserve to cross-license, and found for example prior art on some of their patents. Which others have found too. We just never know, at this stage at least. At least we know Nokia is not a patent farm.

Or to save yourself from FUD later... Apple is constantly FUDding about jailbreak and multi-touch. They even claimed for a long time Mac OS X is UNIX.

Agreed, seems a plausible explanation.

Being sued does not mean you're guilty.

Yes the exact same happened with Sun vs NetApp. Pre-emptive strike or something.

Like MySQL AB

You're forgetting the third party: the lawyers

About all the clueless people talking about "patents and IP being wrong and harmful to society".

Please: SHUT UP.

The platform you're using is based on that very cornerstone. ARM, the company that enables everything we do on a daily basis with our NITs is entirely without material products. They design products, and license them. That's how the whole company works.

And there are many, many other examples. Tessera, Rambus, Qualcomm, just to name a few.

Unless you've worked with, or for one of these companies, you have strictly no idea how hard their job is. Their shares can plummet in a matter of hours, just because some patent is being reviewed. Suddenly, their shares can skyrocket because a jury overruled a previous patent thingy, and they lose millions because of that, because when the stock price changes so drastically, a lot of investors have a knee-jerk reaction that can generate catastrophic situations.

The only reason of existence of those companies? They love technology with a passion. They are those who create the greatest advancements. Those pure IP companies are the ones behind your fifty inch television, your PS3, mobile phone and whatnot. IP companies have one main advantage, they're not slowed down by manufacturing issues. They can keep on creating, and let other people figure out how to bring the product to the market, in one form or another. And what thank do they get for being the most avant-garde technologists in the world? Spit, insults, and bad reputation.

They get a "patent-troll" sticker slammed on their forehead, when really, the only thing they do is protect their main (and only) source of revenue. They invest ridiculous amounts of money into technology that may or may not work in the real world. Qualcomm has probably invested the equivalent of a few countries' GDP in the past 10 years, and they were lucky, it paid off. Over the past 20 years, Qualcomm's shares have exploded a gigantic 8000%.

After corporate banking, being an IP company is probably the riskiest business on the planet. So please, cut them some slack.

IP can be good or bad. No, the world is not going to change overnight, and people are not going to code for free, starting tomorrow. Maybe you've watched Fight Club or Star Trek one too many times, and you'd want to go to a new era of our civilisation where people just work to enhance our society, and get paid in flowers and merit, but things just don't work that way.

How many companies are 100% Open Source, and reward all of their workers fairly? Don't even mention Cannonical, unless you think £16k a year is a fair amount of money. Even the most fervent Open Source supporters have IP, because it makes sense.

If I take a picture, and someone else takes it, and claims he produced it, and makes $500 from showing it in an art gallery, would I not be in my right mind to sue him for fraud and copyright infringement, and either get him to give the money back, or get the money in his stead?

How is that any different from a patent? How is it wrong to protect something you developed, and make sure no one else is going to make a free profit from it? Why would anyone be allowed to make money of my invention, without paying me a fee, or have me share the revenue?

Too many people confuse bad patent laws and abuse of the process with patents being bad in principle. Flawed thinking.

Yes, ironic, so what? We're on the shoulder of many giants; that does not mean we agree with everything they practice(d). The CPU I run is from a convicted monopolist. Doesn't mean I lick their *** or something...

Here some impressive open source hardware: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_hardware for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_SPOT

Patents, licensing, and copyright are all needed, for some of the similar reasons why Communism and Capitalism will never work as pure systems.

But it's their duration and style of enforcement that are problematic. It doesn't necessarily make the idea of them bad. It's just a shame that companies are more then happy to abuse the power of patents, licensing, and copyright, instead of standing up and fighting it when those powers are being abused.

And that is why people jump to the far extreme of abolish them all. But in reality that would be just as problematic as a system that allows the abuse of patents, licensing, and copyright. A happy medium is needed, shame nobody ever sees that though due to greed.

Thats right.

And to think that the Apple CFO was boasting that rivals like Nokia are still trying to catch up to the first iPhone. Go NOKIA hit those Smug gits hard. I hope Apple lose and gain some humility

Zdnet has list of the patents involved in the case.

http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,...331761b,00.htm

Take away the tech described on those patents and what you get? iPod, no wlan. So, how inventive is Apple again?