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The Strange History of Apple and FlatWorld
Fnord666 writes "When a company called FlatWorld Interactives LLC filed suit against Apple just over a year ago, it looked like a typical 'patent troll' lawsuit against a tech company, brought by someone who no longer had much of a business beyond lawsuits. Court documents unsealed this week reveal who's behind FlatWorld, and it's anything but typical. FlatWorld is partly owned by the named inventor on the patents, a Philadelphia design professor named Slavko Milekic. But 35 percent of the company has been quietly controlled by an attorney at one of Apple's own go-to law firms, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. E-mail logs show that the attorney, John McAleese, worked together with his wife and began planning a wide-ranging patent attack against Apple's touch-screen products in January 2007—just days after the iPhone was revealed to the world."
Not a lawyer, but doesn't this go under the banner of "conflict of interest"? If Apple has a strong relationship with this law firm, how does having a lawyer at that firm involved in a patent lawsuit against a company he may have represented in the past effect this? I'm sure this guy has probably thought that aspect of this patent fight through, but isn't that an obvious avenue of attack for Apple?
Live by the Sword. Die by the Sword.
But look around you. You want Somalia? Russia? India? China?
Okay first, I get your point. And I agree with it. The rule of law is essential to civilization. So let me put that out there first.
But, if you look at the history of every empire, every major civilization, you will find a pattern of increasing legal complexity to the point that the system itself caves under its own excesses. It becomes pathological and toxic to the purpose it was meant to serve, and ultimately strangles itself. If you read enough anthropology you find that civilization is cyclical -- it starts with anarchy, advances to a golden age, and then dies of increasing bureaucratic, legal, and political complexity, and the cycle repeats.
America has passed its golden age. It is now on the downward slope towards eventual anarchy. The rule of law is becoming less and less accessible to more and more people. Crime rates are up. Incarceration is up. The government is spending more and more on law enforcement every year, and more and more on military as well. These things are classic signs of a society accelerating towards oblivion. I don't know that it can be reversed. I have yet to see a historical example where it was. I'd like to think it is possible, but empirically, that's a spot of wishful thinking more than anything.
I know I was brief and snarky in the OP, but there is an underlying truth: This complexity does not serve the interests of the common person. It serves wealthy interests. So when I hear about the corruption of the system and people in it saying "Oh no, this guy went too far" I take it with a big grain of salt. Maybe it is going too far, but that's the general trend... and since I know of no way of reversing or correcting it, it's not really newsworthy for me. It's just history repeating.
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What year, exactly, did America pass its golden age? You'd be surprised how many times people have said "America has passed its prime", over the decades before you were even a passing thought in your parents minds before you were born.
It would be the point when children have less than their parents. Or about 20 years ago now.
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