Sprint and Samsung Hit With Patent Stupidity
from the hello-mcfly dept
You don't have to dig too hard to find examples of patent ridiculousness, but every once in a while one so absurd comes along it deserves mention as another indictment of the stupidity of the patent system. Apparently Sprint and Samsung have been sued for violating two patents filed by an Illinois couple covering clamshell smartphones and mobile phones with a touchscreen interface. The US Patent Office must be about the only people that could see either of these "inventions" as non-obvious, but even more puzzling is that the patents were filed in December 2002 -- so there's plenty of prior art on both of them. Motorola tried -- and failed -- to assert that it had the patent on clamshell phone designs, and allowing someone else to patent flip smartphones instead is ridiculous. There were also numerous touchscreen phones out by December 2002, such as the original Treo (announced in October 2001) and even the Qualcomm pdQ, announced in September 1998. There's absolutely no innovation here. All the "inventors" did was find some combinations of existing technology that hadn't yet been patented -- combinations that were so obvious, nobody else had bothered to try to patent them.
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Kyocera QCP 6035
Link to FCC info about it...
Chris.
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Should dogs be patented?
http://www.bcast.co.jp/cgi-bin/yahoo/news.asx?cid=20051129-00000294-fnn-loc_all-movie-001&media =wm300k
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No Subject Given
This is a dirty, dirty time in America. When the police are corrupt at all levels, it is time to move.
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No Subject Given
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Re: No Subject Given
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Re: No Subject Given
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Man I need to get to the patent office
priceline.com here I come!!!
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Re: Man I need to get to the patent office
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No problem for judge on summary judgment
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Re: No problem for judge on summary judgment
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Nothing will change
Violations like this are hidden from people, and the cost of the lawsuit will be divided among the companies product and have only a small impact on the consumer.
The only way I see the ever educate the public on the steaming pile of dung that is the current patent system, is to really make it blow up in their faces.
This is what I suggest: One person patents something realy cool that everybody wants. Another person produces this product and sell millions, it will be in every home. They must do this without the permission of the inventor. Once he product is ubiquitous, the inventor can take suit against the manufacturer. The manufacturer stops producing the item. The public goes insane, because they need their fix.
Other than this, I see no other way for the public to get excited about patent reform. Most people care little for anything that doesn't jump in front of their face wearing a day-glo orange jumpsuit and a strobe light.
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Excellent idea ! Just excellent !
large manufacturers to be able to take any patented inventions they want and produce them on scale without paying a dime to the original inventors and patent holders ?
Going back in history, yoy want Western Union, for example, to take Bell's phone patent and produce phones on scale and let Bell himself go broke and live under the bridge ?
Sir, you are not just idiot, you are complete moron !
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Re: Excellent idea ! Just excellent !
large manufacturers to be able to take any patented inventions they want and produce them on scale without paying a dime to the original inventors and patent holders ?
No, I'm afraid you've misunderstood completely. As should be clear from actually reading the issue, we think that patents on obvious things like this are clearly a *barrier* to innovation.
Imagine if, Bell had patented the concept of the "using a system of dots and dashes to replace letters", and then sued Western Union for the telegraph, demanding they pay millions or stop using it.
That's where the problem is.
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Re: Excellent idea ! Just excellent !
There might be other reasons why it wouldn't be patentable, but you can't claim that it was "obvious" to somebody in 1800 that you could use a series of electrical pulses to replicate letters over a distance.
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Re: Excellent idea ! Just excellent !
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Read some history books !
Bell had more than enough of this lawsuit crap, when everybody and his brother just showed up to claim telephone invention for himself.
Somehow, it all sorted itself out through the court system, over the years...
You gotta have some belief in the US judicial system. With those morons in the White House today and high-flying corporate thieves this is the only thing to protect all of us (including independent inventors) from abuses of power...
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Re: Read some history books !
At great expense to everyone involved. Much of that money could have gone into actually developing better products and getting them to market.
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Re: Read some history books !
To buy a gun or to hire an assasin to kill somebody who owes you money but doesn't want to pay ? This is how such disputes are handled in some other countries like Russia, much like in the good old days of Wild Wild West...
Courts have replaced guns and assasins long time ago, which is good for everybody.
I would rather hire a laywer and go to court than shoot anybody myself (even if they really deserve to be shot)
If you are so opposed to resolving matters through the court system why don't you go to Russia and try to start your bissiness there.
I can warn you right away that you'd better have people with guns protecting you if you start making any serious money...
Just stop bitching about US judicial system:
it's the best judicial system in the world, or "the best justice your money can buy"...
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Re: Read some history books !
Um. I'm suggesting we let companies compete fairly in the market.
Who brought up killing people or that the judicial system was bad?
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