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...
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.