
Microsoft, Apple, Google sued over icon software patent - chaostheory
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081226-microsoft-apple-google-sued-over-icon-software-patent.html
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mattmcknight
These bastards deserve nothing. Their software looks like garbage. It also
seems really foolish to include Microsoft in this suit, as they are the most
likely to have a competing patent. The Cygnus interface looks a lot like the
Powerpoint slide sorter.

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iamdave
Patent law inherently represents everything that is fucked up about how this
country works when it comes to innovative rights and creative control. The
ability to patent ANYTHING should have been killed decades ago.

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sachinag
Again, this isn't patent law messing up - it's overworked USPTO examiners not
finding the prior art. Furthermore, Google, Microsoft, Apple et al could have
challenged the validity of the patent application when it was public, before
it was awarded.

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noonespecial
Google's official founding date was September 7, 1998, two months after the
patent application was filed. I doubt they were in any position to search all
of the patents _applied for_ and challenge the validity of all of the vague
ridiculousness that was currently on file that may some day interfere with a
20% project that might possibly become a product!

This is _submarine-ary_ of the first order. It may be legal at this time but
I'm ready to lean out and say that its _immoral_.

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iamdave
I don't know if immoral is the right word here, more incredibly irresponsible.

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qqq
You're saying incredible irresponsibility is moral or morally neutral?

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daniel-cussen
This is excellent news in that it may make patent law look even sillier.

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kwamenum86
Does anyone understand the purpose of patent law? It provides incentives to
inventors to keep inventing. To denounce patent law because of a ptent troll
is pretty silly. The system needs tweaking but there patent law (and
intellectual property law in general) allows creators to monetize innovation
easily, which is incredibly important.

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gommm
For me patent law is like communism, the purpose/ideals of it might be nice,
but I'd like to see an implementation that does not suck...

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jbjohns
Then step outside the US.

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gommm
I'm french and living in japan. Japanese patent law is not much better than
the us one (or at least from the little I learned about it) and in europe we
are constantly fighting to prevent software patents...

Now in truth, while I used to be interested in this, I haven't looked much in
the question in the last few years.

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jbjohns
I'm not surprised that Japan's solution isn't very good (especially
considering their some-what toxic property/business ownership laws), but it's
a big step from "all the ones _I'm familiar with_ suck" to "they _all_ suck".

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gommm
That's why I said 'I'd like to see an implementation that does not suck', it
means all the ones I've seen (= familiar with) suck... :-)

