Slashdot Mirror
Acacia Sues Amazon Over Kindle Fire
walterbyrd writes "A company called Smartphone Technologies filed the suit last Friday in Texas Eastern District Court accusing the Kindle Fire tablet of violating four of its patents. Smartphone Technologies is owned by Acacia Research, a firm that buys and licenses patents and is seen by many as a patent troll. 'One patent cited in the suit, U.S. Patent No. 6,956,562, simply refers to a method for using a touch screen to enter commands on a handheld computer. Another patent in question relates to a method for storing calendars on a PDA and was initially issued to Palm in 2002.'"
A PDA is just a weak computer in a small form factor, so why did palm even get it in 2002 when a calender on a computer was decades old before then?
Patents are worthless, and are choking what little creativity is left in our country.
Slashdot these days is little more than lawsuits, settlements and the ongoings of such. This is what our industry has turned into huh? Sad.
Which is why the free market is a myth. It can't last. As the players get bigger, and history shows that's the end result, they start to influence the countries they reside in, to make it harder for new companies to enter markets. Even if they don't, it is pretty hard to compete with entrenched companies benefiting from control of resources, logistics, resellers, etc..
Libertarian free markets are a nice idea, but corporatism is their real life counterpart, and it isn't very fun.
Great Intellect...
Why do you ask a question, then answer it yourself?
By definition a patent must be new, useful, and non-obvious. While the methods listed in the patents are useful, they are neither new, nor non-obvious. Either the USPTO employees are ill-educated on software methodologies, or just plain lazy.
I agree that the whole of civilization has been built by minor improvements. So, why should we slow that process down with software patents?
It's looking like the patent courts - in a manner of speaking, as I suppose there is really no single "patent court" - like the courts are becoming a sort of platform for marketing by obscure companies with uncertain patents on file - but not just any obscure companies, obscure companies with lawyers.
Specifically, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas became nothing but a "platform for ... obscure companies with lawyers" some time ago. There seems to be something particularly toxic about this particular court's combination of judges, jury pools, and court rules that attracts this type of activity.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Amazon are evil bastards who actually deliver useful products
Actually nowadays I am noticing more and more often that Amazon isn't actually selling me products, they are merely providing a storefront for someone else.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/09/21/riddle-me-this-do-patent-trolls-create-wealth-or-d.aspx
Boston University study concludes that $88 billion has been wiped off the value of US companies by these trolls, raking in less than $8 billion in return, and since these trolls don't make things or really invent things, no manufacturing was made by them, and no scientists employed and no research done.
What the USPTO has done is a disaster for the USA, and the reforms don't fix anything.
As much as I dislike patent trolls, it's really hard to feel sorry for Amazon in this one. They are the ones who patented one-click-purchase, after all. What goes around comes around.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."