Smartphones Patented — Just About Everyone Sued 1 Minute Later

This week the US Patent and Trademark Office issued a surprisingly (although I guess it shouldn't be) broad patent for a "mobile entertainment and communication device". Upon closer inspection you may notice that it pretty much outlines the ubiquitous smartphone concept. "It's a patent for a mobile phone with removable storage, an internet connection, a camera and the ability to download audio or video files. The patent holding firm who has the rights to this patent wasted no time at all. At 12:01am Tuesday morning, it filed three separate lawsuits against just about everyone you can think of, including Apple, Nokia, RIM, Sprint, ATT, HP, Motorola, Helio, HTC, Sony Ericsson, UTStarcomm, Samsung and a bunch of others. Amusingly, the company actually first filed the lawsuits on Monday, but realized it was jumping the gun and pulled them, only to refile just past the stroke of midnight. "

Comments

Re:not very smrt

[funkify]

S-M-R-T! I AM SO SMRT!

Re:Manufacturers to release hardware fix

[db32]

Damnit you asshole would you shut up?! At least make their lawyers come up with this shit on their own, no need to hand them more crap. I bet this won't be modded Funny when a patent describing that in obscure ways gets a stamp of approval. However a lawsuit against you for revealing trade secrets would be kind of amusing.

In all seriousness, it doesn't take fancy tech to show how totally fucked our patent system is. When fast food places started having "patent pending" on their fucking fry containers or coffee cups it should have been painfully obvious something was going very very wrong.