Posted: 7/16/2011 5:31:45 PM EDT
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I want to start by saying that I am all for patents. If you spend years going through design iterations and invest in manufacturing infrastructure, you need to ensure that you won't lose your market share to parasites and scavengers if your product takes off.
With that said, software patents piss me off. Every one of them I've read or seen a judgement for is something that I would regard as "common sense" and likely something that already had existing prior art that simply wasn't patented in the past. The fact that software has the advantage of being able to be protected in source code form and is delivered compiled as a "trade secret" should mean that if someone does something similar, then it would fail the patentability "obviousness" test. The case that's got me upset is this one: http://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/15/itc-rules-for-apple-in-htc-patent-case/ A judge with the US International Trade Commission ruled today that HTC violated two of Apple's patents in a year-long case filed last March. Apple had accused HTC of violating 20 of its patents, and filed a second complaint this week, claiming infringement of five more patents. HTC has said it will appeal the decision.
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