This Is What A Patent Thicket Looks Like [Updated]

from the visualization-works dept

A couple weeks ago, we asked if any smartphone could survive the patent thicket. In the last few months there has been a ton of lawsuits (and ITC filings) over smartphones supposedly violating patents. And since that post was written a few more lawsuits were filed as well. It's patent nuclear war breaking out in the smartphone space, and the end result is that we, the public, all suffer. Lots of money is being spent on lawsuits, and that could have gone into better development and giving us more features, better prices and better service.

Of course, while I described this in words, sometimes, as the cliche goes, a picture is worth a lot more. Thanks to Nick Bilton at the NY Times for putting together that picture (see update below) that shows what the patent thicket in the smartphone space looks like: That's a picture of a patent thicket, and it's a picture of waste that does the exact opposite of promoting innovation.

Update: Unfortunately, it looks like Bilton may have exaggerated a bit. Joe Mullin looks through the details and notices that some of the lawsuits appear totally unrelated to the smartphone space. As he notes, there are plenty of smartphone patent lawsuits to go around, but there's no need to exaggerate them.

Filed Under: patent thicket, patents, smartphones

More Random And Arbitrary iPhone App Removals: WiFi Finders Disappear

from the and-now-we're-at-war-with-eurasia dept

For a while the complaints used to be about Apple's totally arbitrary process for choosing which apps get into the iPhone app store, but lately the complaints have been about Apple (again totally arbitrarily) removing apps that were already there. There were all those complaints about the sudden removal of "adult" apps (unless you were someone famous like Playboy, in which case Apple was fine with it), and now there are complaints that Apple suddenly and inexplicably has removed WiFi finders from the app store. While developers feel they need to keep developing for the iPhone given its footprint in the market, moves like this are going to keep pissing off developers quite a bit too. You can do that when you dominate the market, but it can come back to bite you later on.

Filed Under: app store, arbitrary removal, iphone, wifi
Companies: apple