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I think you are looking at it inside a box, as an isolated issues.

Patent litigation is simply a weapon used by companies offensively or defensively.

When in a fight with your competitors you look at your weapons and theirs. When evaluating the visible weaponry of their competitors they see patent litigation near the top of the list. When they look at their arsenal of weapons, they do not see patent litigation at the top of the list. Therefore, they have decided it's better to eliminate patent litigation as a weapon rather than to go into battle against it.

Their strategy is to change the rules of what weapons can be used in battle. :-) It's very smart.



Isn't this like nation-states trying to prevents wars so that they can compete on building effective societies? It would be perversely cynical to suggest that the nations more confident in their ability to deliver effective societies were somehow cheating by trying to prevent the needless destruction and waste of wars.


It's not like that at all. Your analogy is completely lost on me.


He's merely pointing out that there are two ways (among others, of course) you can try to win in the marketplaces:

1. Build innovative products that your customers want, and keep iterating and innovating to keep your customers coming back for more.

2. Use the legal system to force your competitors out of your market, or make it so expensive to stay that it's harder to gain market share.

Apple has a long and brilliant history of #1, which makes it even more disheartening that it seems like they're resorting to #2 here.

While both may be legally valid, which is more beneficial to consumers and society as a whole?


I'm generally a lurker, and not a programmer, not highly opinionated on software patenting, but to me the analogy was perfectly clear.

Bogus patents = military power

useful innovations = effective societies.

Trying to remove bogus patents/military power and shift the center of gravity over to useful innovations/effective societies, isn't nefarious despite advantaging one particular party.




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