Do Apple lawyers smoke crack? ;)

[jasong]

I'll post a link in a second, but that's a question a judge recently asked an Apple lawyer who wanted to subpoena(stupid oe combination drives me nuts) a list of witnesses that was extremely long considered the time left to do things.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57...-witness-list/

To be honest, I'm suprised this question hasn't come up sooner. In the past few years people have to tried to copyright things like the lowercase i, the word book and the term app store. The first and last one were done by Apple, while book was done by the paragon of virtue known as Facebook.

In an age where a company thinks it's prudent to try to copyright a rectangle with a button in the middle on one side, perhaps instead of complaining about copyright law, maybe we need to bankroll our favorite local nerd(and do this as a nation, with maybe 1 nerd per thousand tech enthusiasts or better) and send them to picket DC. For the US I mean, I've heard Britain has it bad, though I don't think they have it quite as bad as as us.

Things have been going to crap for a while now. I'm not sure what the solution is to be honest. Maybe some sort of wtf-type law, where if enough people think a patent is silly, than it gets a ton more examination to see if it should have been granted.

Maybe make it so if somebody sees a patent they think is bizarre, they can give it a "bizarre-vote" and maybe trigger something that's meant to be noticed by the company they think it most affects. So there could be an app(cross-compatible across Android, the various Apple stuff and Windows of course) where a ceo could get a list of flagged copyright patents, and the stuff that had the name of their company attached(by the flagger) and got the most votes would be at the top of the list for them to look at.

[Xyzzy]

http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized...s-patent-ills/

[Dubslow]

Yes.

[flashjh]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

Yes.

Nice read.

[chappy]

" I just know that Macs use pixie dust and purple elephant dung to make magic!” mentality is a part of the Apple culture from the top down. From the lowest-level sales rep all the way up to the corporate guys."

love it.

Of course on the Mac you can play many great games that you can't find on the PC anymore, like Zork, Breakout, Super-Breakout, and Photoshop.

(bonus points if you get that reference.)

[ewmayer]

From the ArsTechnica article:

The problem might be fixed by raising the barrier to filing an application, possibly by raising the price (one government officials proposed a $50,000 fee per application), but the USPTO has a mission to be open to all inventors. Currently, it charges either $500 or $1,000 to file an app, even though it costs the patent office $4,200 to evaluate each patent (the subsidy comes from maintenance fees paid by current patent holders).

Dudas wants to see the barrier to filing raised in less costly ways, such as requiring minimal searching for similar or identical previous patents, and he wants applicants to describe exactly how their invention expands the state of the art; in other words, make a strong argument that your idea is demonstrably better than what's already out there. These changes alone will "drop out a significant portion of bad applications."

Raising filing fees to the sky is idiotic, as it would simply penalize the grass-roots "little guy" innovator for the misdeeds of the behemoths - who can easily afford the higher fees anyway.

There is a simple remedy here: Penalties for frivolous patent applications (as there have long been for lawsuits and other legal motions), and for ones which make false claims of novelty or usefulness. The penalties would become increasingly severe for repeated violators, up to "the nuclear option" of being shut out of the patent process for (say) a year or more if one does not cease and desist the frivolity.

It'll never happen, of course - the big multinationals own way too many DC politicians and lobbyists for that - but just to go on record that there is a tried-and-true remedy out there.