This is a pretty mediocre article, but the specific topic is interesting. I've gone from being bummed on the verdict -- to me, it's like Kraft getting exclusive rights to make cheddar cheese (they really don't do it well) -- to being kinda stoked on it.
Virtually everybody on this forum (except Nathan Myhrvold's paid agents, perhaps) knows that the US patent system is completely fucked; still, there's been little hope of getting even 1% of Americans to appreciate the problems with it.
But, this Apple case, I think, breaks it down in a way such that many more people can see the flaws in the system. And the jury errors probably increase that understanding (even though they logically shouldn't).
Nobody thinks that any company should have exclusive rights to pinch-to-zoom, the steering wheel, or cheddar cheese. And this case is actually helping to simplify that proposition for a lot of people who don't have a technical background or a lot of extra time to ponder such issues.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 10.6 ms ] threadVirtually everybody on this forum (except Nathan Myhrvold's paid agents, perhaps) knows that the US patent system is completely fucked; still, there's been little hope of getting even 1% of Americans to appreciate the problems with it.
But, this Apple case, I think, breaks it down in a way such that many more people can see the flaws in the system. And the jury errors probably increase that understanding (even though they logically shouldn't).
Nobody thinks that any company should have exclusive rights to pinch-to-zoom, the steering wheel, or cheddar cheese. And this case is actually helping to simplify that proposition for a lot of people who don't have a technical background or a lot of extra time to ponder such issues.