Broken Patent System? Google, Apple Disagree

Whiney Mac Fanboy writes "The AlwaysOn Stanford Summit featured the panel discussion 'The Patent Crisis: Crossroads for the Business of Technology.' Speakers included patent lawyers from Google, IBM, and Apple. According to The Register, Google's and Apple's patent jocks had diametrically opposing views. Google's head of patents believes the system is in crisis: 'The Patent Office is overburdened,' she said. 'The volume of patents going in is huge. And the quality of patents coming out — it could be better.' But Apple's chief patent counsel said the US patent system was 'not broken' and 'not in crisis,' calling it 'the best in the world.'"

Comments

I have smelled fecal matter...

[RingDev]

from animals around the world. And I have to say, the fecal matter of the North American Badger is by far the best.

All hail the Badger, its shit is the best smelling crap in the whole world!

-Rick

Re:It's Official: Apple & Google are Evil

[trolltalk.com]

Parent poster asketh:

Why is that so bad?

Look at what you quoted :

But he acknowledged that there was a "huge bubble" of patent assertions that needs to be scaled back. "The question with this bubble market, as with any bubble market, is 'Can we solve it without a crisis arising?'" he said

If the patent system has generated a "patent bubble", then it already IS f$cked up, same as the housing bubble, and the dot-com bubble before it.

Apple is just being a dickhead because they profit from the current b0rked system, same as real estate agents profited from the housing bubble to put people into homes they can't afford, and stock brokers got people to buy stocks that had no underlying real value.

First item on the agenda should be abolishing all software patents and all business method patents. Neither one is a "device" as understood by the original framers of patent law.

Re:Apple Says Patent System is Like a Battery...

[Lars T.]

Errm, no.

Try: It doesn't need replacing this year and replacing it will cost.

apple is just proprietrary and greedy

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything about apple is just plain nasty. From their sluggish resource hogging operating system that only runs on expensive apple hardware, their love for Digital Restriction Management (also totally proprietrary), their constant wall-to-wall corporate propaganda, and their lunatic fringe 'Cult of apple religion' - everything about apple stinks of a jealous protectionism, and proprietary vendor lock-in. Patents are only one means to an end, of preventing interoperability with their insular platform, and preventing competition. I have never dealt with a more difficult company that is less willing to fix all the problems of its own making - particularly those concerned with hardware quality. Apple invents very little. It is just good at taking technology invented by others and sticking it in a pretty box with an interface for idiots.
Apple management likes the US Patent system because it helps them to lock users into their nasty proprietary platform - with lock-in so severe that Microsoft could only dream of it. If Apple lacked its jealous protectionism, it would be effectively the same as Microsoft - an untamed, greedy, unethical corporate beast. Even the minds of many Apple users are suffering from vendor lock-in. I suspect my point shall be proved by the members of cult of apple that reply to this.

Vague on details of change...

[winomonkey]

As someone currently dealing with the headache of patent law first hand, I have to agree with point made by both sides. Yes, I feel that the Google stance is 'righter,' but I also feel that the process of fighting patents in court is slightly broken and could be done better.

However, a major problem will always exist - money. If they manage to streamline the process (some judiciaries are creating "rocket dockets" for patent disputes), there will still be an overhead of legal fees and expensive expert witnesses that keep small players stuck in a bind. Sure, it might cost half as much to fight an obvious case, and it might take a fraction of the time, but half of an obscene amount of money is still, well, pretty damn obscene.

So, the little guys are left with the choice to take a license and deal with it, or fight the patent in court (recent changes make it so that the licensee can take a license and then turn around and sue the patent holder for non-infringement, which is a step in the right direction) for a sum of money that may well be beyond the operating costs of the organization.

Unless Apple is proposing that these "changes to the litigation process" include making lawyers fees non-existent, allowing experts to be experts without charging five-figure fees for their testimony, and reducing the amount of time that it takes to fight such cases, I don't see there being a very useful move in the legal process that will make a court battle any more appealing to a small software company.