
Taiwan's HTC sues Apple over patents - tilt
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/16/us-apple-htc-idUSTRE77F38E20110816
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tsotha
You have to wonder how much cheaper mobiles would be if companies hadn't a)
patented all the obvious ways to do things and b) spent millions suing each
other.

I blame the patent office. There was a segment on NPR yesterday where they
pointed out in some cases there are thousands of patents that cover the same
invention. Isn't that why you _have_ a patent office... to prevent this from
happening? Instead all the real decision making is kicked (expensively) into
the courts.

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CountHackulus
I don't think it's ever been as clear as now that the patent system is broken.
Everyone is suing everyone else, and if anything innovation just goes on in
the background regardless of patents.

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JonoW
Think we're going need a new "who's suing whom" graph, getting hard to keep
up... ([http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/10/whos_suin...](http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/10/whos_suing_whom.png))

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roc
When it comes to patent litigation, it's safe to assume that they all are, or
will be, bi-directional.

Unless one side has no products.

If one side merely has no (relevant) patents, it usually just means they're
going to go buy some patents and then make their counter-suit.

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guelo
Maybe true but that obscures the fact that the recent escalation of patent
madness is caused by Apple suing every Android manufacturer. What I'm saying
is, Steve Jobs is an asshole.

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EGreg
The Android strikes back! Start of the patent apocalypse.

Here is a way to abolish patents -- overload the court system with it.

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ori_b
The cynic in me says that will just lead to a bigger court system as they hire
more lawyers and judges to handle the increased load.

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Roritharr
That's a way to battle unemployment that is caused by technological
progress... just enlarge the not-productive sectors until everyone has a job
shuffling papers around.

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georgemcbay
My next startup is going to be Heroku meets Angie's List for Telephone
Sanitizers.

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EGreg
Help the world and make your next startup's business model "pay us to find
prior art to invalidate patent X, and open source our results"

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cjboco
I'm assuming this new suit is based on patents HTC acquired from S3?

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john-n
Are the patents in question known?

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dminor
There are links to them in this article:
<http://thisismynext.com/2011/08/16/htc-sues-apple-patents/>

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barista
Wouldn't it help if Google sued on behalf of all device makers now that it has
much larger trove?

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cube13
Motorola is already suing Apple(and Apple is suing Motorola) over Motorola's
patents. That shouldn't change with Google's acquisition, and any resolution
of the suit would probably make Apple a licensee of the patents, making them
immune to any suits over them.

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mckoss
A patent holder is not required to license their patent. If found valid by the
court, they are free to enjoin others from using their technology for the
duration of the patent period.

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cube13
Motorola is counter-suing Apple, though. Without knowing exactly what patents
each party is saying the other is infringing on, I would wager that the
endgame for both companies is now a cross-license agreement more than an
injunction against the other's products.

