Intermec Sees Symbol's Revenge Patent Lawsuit, And Piles On Another For Spite
from the why-not? dept
And people thought the idea the idea that companies were getting patents for the sake of nuclear stockpiling was silly? Well, it appears that nuclear war is now breaking out between Symbol and Intermec. Last year, Intermec started the fun by suing a bunch of companies, including Symbol, for supposedly violating some RFID patents. Two weeks ago, Symbol thought it was only fair to sue Intermec over its own WiFi patents. Because no fired shot can go unanswered, the good lawyers at Intermec have now come up with more RFID patents they can sue Symbol over. Or maybe they're the same ones and they're suing again. Honestly, it doesn't matter. All that's really happening here is that the two sides are wasting a ridiculous amount of money on lawyers and lawsuits -- when that money should be going towards new product development and getting products to market. At some point, the two sides will settle and there will be some press release about cross licensing patents and no one will be happy, except for some of the lawyers involved. All of this "innovating" (that's what patents are for, right?) is going to kill us all -- or, at least make a lot of this technology much more expensive.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
