Slashdot Mirror
Palm/3Com Graffiti A Patent Infringement on Xerox
Olmy's Jart writes "According to this article on money.cnn.com, a judge has ruled that graffiti, the one stroke shorthand used on Palm Pilots, infringes a Xerox patent for "unistrokes". Really light on details and no links to betters sites, unfortunately." MSNBC also has the story.
In a court of law common sense gets thrown out the door as a first step. The next step is to evaluate how much money each party has. Whoever has the most money wins. If both parties are equally (or almost equally) wealthy then the judge considers their political affiliations. Only in the event of a tie will the so called facts come into play. Mostly though fact get twisted up pretty good.
It was clear in this case that xerox had more money then palm and that palm was actually selling a product and trying to make money from it. They were bound to lose. A company which does nothing but sit on a patent waiting for other people to infringe on it is clearly more deserving then a company which actually produces a product. In order to better serve the public the courts decided that the price of palms should go up or that they should go out of business. Cool huh?
War is necrophilia.