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Educate yourself. China - like all other countries - doesn't give a flying fuck care about any other country's IP. Patents are NOT international, they are specific to each country in which they are granted. There is no "worldwide patent" at all. HOWEVER, China cares deeply about patents filed and granted within China - those same patents that Qualcomm has in the US and in China. Meaning that China DOES care about them and can enforce them in China.

China enforces its own patents. The US enforces its own patents. Germany likewise. Have a patent in France or Germany or Japan? Good luck enforcing it in the US, the UK - or China.

Which is exactly why the Bush administration made an appearance before the Democrat-controlled congress and warned them of the consequences of congress's pushing Fannie Mae to continue to underwrite (and to essentially REQUIRE underwritten banks to provide) things like no-income-proof, no-down-payment mortgages to people who couldn't possibly afford them once their rates ballooned. That Clinton-era policy, of putting more people into home ownership no matter what, started that bubble growing, and the congress under Pelosi and Reid kept pouring gas on that smoldering fire. The Bush administration spent six years trying to push through Fannie/Freddie control measures, and repeatedly warned congress about the problems and the dire consequences.

The same Bush administration that was championing the ownership economy to justify his tax cuts? The same Bush administration with a Zero downpayment initiative?

Where's the Bush-era policy of correcting the housing bubble? Where's the Bush-era policy of warning about an unsound economy? He had enough States of the Union to do it. It took him until 2008? And even then, he doesn't mention anything about holding Banks responsible for their misdeeds.

No, no, with you, it's always Democrats, always Democrats, who are to blame when it comes to anything wrong. That's your consistent approach. You even try to excuse George W. Bush, because Democrats controlled Congress?

Well, in that case, who controls Congress now? Why haven't they fixed anything? Why haven't they done the job you want done? Where's their plans?

People selling derivatives around that mountain of unsecured, bloated housing debt didn't cause people to lose houses and banks to put the brakes on dishing out more credit. People lost houses because their income couldn't keep up with foolishly chosen mortgages, and because they had speculated on the prospect of a get-rich-quick turn around on the house in the near future, they owed more on those houses than they were really worth. It's not exactly mysterious.

People selling derivatives that were bogus were trying to get themselves rich, not serve anybody other than themselves. People who bought a mortgage, sold to them by the lender at the bank, weren't exactly given fair and upfront information about it. People who bought a house, and wanted to make payments, were suddenly asked to compensate for the bank's risk-taking, not their own. It's not exactly mysterious.

Eventually somebody had to place the wrong bets, and when it did, the whole house of cards started to tumble down.

The banks got stuck with enormous piles of worthless debt, and houses it cost more to foreclose on than were often worth the trouble.

Nope, the banks made sure the rest of us got suck with piles of their manufactured worthless debt, and deliberately engaged in foreclosure processes that were reckless, at best, haphazard at worst.

Exactly why you can't hold them responsible, I don't know.

Didn't they simply use the harmony libraries as a base which were presumably Apache licenced?

That's a good point, I just checked, and Harmony is Apache-licensed, not GPL. The way they got around it was by doing a clean-room implementation for interoperability purposes. This is allowed as fair use (Sony vs Connectix). (Incidentally, Sun explicitly allowed interoperability as long as it's compatible with their Java: http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Java_... )

Google is likely going to try a fair use defense based on interoperability (probably other defenses as well). That isn't likely to work, see this: http://www.natlawreview.com/ar...

The court also discounted Google’s interoperability arguments on the basis that there was no evidence of the existence of any apps written in Java and running on the Android platform. Rather, the court emphasized that Google’s desire was to capitalize on the fact that programmers already trained in Java’s APIs in order to accelerate its development process.

do you truly not know any women in software or gaming who've experienced the kind of awful "boy's only club" attitudes and sometimes downright literal sexual harassment

I do not. I'm willing to believe, the attitudes exist — as do women-only clubs, but I don't see anything particularly wrong (as in "this must be illegal!") with them. Nor do I know a person with a claim of having been persecuted over being a woman supported better, than something I can claim on the basis of being a Ukrainian expatriate.

Such claims are bogus and the laws they are based on — tyrannical. I do not believe, we've become a better country by adopting such laws — they target the symptoms (and do so poorly), while allowing various scammers (both private and governmental) to blackmail innocent employees into various "settlements".

A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination of words, phrases, symbols or designs, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others.

Do Trademarks, Copyrights and Patents protect the same things?

No. Trademarks, copyrights and patents all differ. A copyright protects an original artistic or literary work; a patent protects an invention.

As pointed out in the Wiki article on design patents, an object (like the Coca-Cola bottle shape) can be both covered by a design patent and a trademark. As you mentioned, a design patent runs out after a certain amount of time, but a trademark is valid as long as it is used in commerce. Also, from this article:

In Qualitex Co. v. Jacobson Prods. Co., the U.S. Supreme Court held that color alone may be protected as a trademark, “when that color has attained ‘secondary meaning’ and therefore identifies and distinguishes a particular brand (and thus indicates its ‘source’).” The Court held color may not be protected as a trademark when it is “functional”. There are two types of functionality: “utilitarian” and “aesthetic.” A color is functional under the utilitarian test if it is essential to the use or purpose of the product, or affects the cost or quality of the product. A color is aethestically functional if its exclusive use “would put a competitor at a significant non-reputation-related disadvantage”. If color “act(s) as a symbol that distinguishes a firm’s goods and identifies their source, without serving any other significant function,” it can be protected as a trademark.

If you work around lots of multimeters, as I do, Fluke certainly has distinguished itself by looks. So, don't start up your new package delivery company and paint all your box trucks a certain color brown, don't sell jewelry in little boxes that have a certain shade of blue, and don't design your housing insulation products to be pink. However, I believe you could sell tractors that are a certain shade of green because within that context, green is identified as a functional color.

For all of you non-lawyers who have not followed Supreme Court caselaw on arbitration, the fault lies with the Federal Arbitration Act. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Arbitration_Act In short, the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that that Act has such a strong presumption for the validity of an arbitration clause that it is impossible to wiggle out of it. The next emerging threat is going to be binding arbitration in employment contracts. It already is inserted in many employment contracts, and the only protection at the moment is being offered by the NLRB. See, e.g., http://www.natlawreview.com/article/nlrb-throws-cold-water-mandatory-arbitration-provisions-prohibiting-class-actions-em

http://www.creativeservices.com/compliance-corner/eeoc-guidance-on-whether-high-school-diploma-requirement-violates-adahttp://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/1/eeoc-high-school-diploma-might-violate-americans-w/?page=2
“Even in those situations where the high school diploma requirement can be justified, employers will still need to consider” whether a “reasonable accommodation” could be provided to allow a disabled person without a diploma to perform a given job.

Some the points apply at the high level of education. Even more so when there are lot's of tech schools and drop in / NON degree community colleges (I was in a class where teacher DID IT work and DID NOT HAVE A degree)

Traditional education is a poor fit for the tech fled next to the newer ideas and the newer ideas can be better fits for people with disabilities.

But with the tech fled even people without disabilities can get a better education useing some of the new ideas.

http://www.natlawreview.com/article/eeoc-takes-aim-high-school-diploma-requirements-employment-potentially-disparately-i

"Moreover, in the event a job applicant with a disability can establish that he or she did not complete high school because of that disability, an employer may need to make a “reasonable accommodation” exception to the requirement, even where the requirement is job-related and consistent with business necessity. An alternative skills or competencies test to measure the candidate’s qualification for the job, for instance, might have to be considered."

Replace high school with College and say alternative skills or competencies test can be tech school & community classes, doing the jobs hands on, taking online classes, ETC.

That is just some ideas from 1 side of the issues other areas to look at are the skills gap in college and the GAP from CS skills to IT skills.

The books

Academically Adrift

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower

Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality

show that The idea that a university education is for everyone is a destructive myth and Too many people are going to college.

I think that tech could use more a plumbers or electrician like apprenticeship system and that can be a better fit for people not cut for traditional college.