Death to patents!

November 25, 2008 at 9:11 pm · Filed under Observations and Ramblings, The Future, Work Related Stuff and tagged: patents

Apple is being sued for patent infringement over the way its iPhone surfs the internet by EMG Technology, who alleged that the company infringes on a patent it holds for navigating the internet on mobile devices. The patent was issued little more than a month ago, but relies on 76 claims that were originally filed in 1999. The patent covers how online content is displayed on mobile devices after being reformatted from HTML to XML.

Wake up call to all the old way of doing things: Gen Y don’t give a shit about copyright, and China doesn’t give a shit about Patents (ergo: they will be worthless within 50 years, and a good thing too!).

In my opinion if someone comes up with an innovative new product, they should get off their ass and commercialise it and make money from it, then by the time everyone has copied them and they therefore make less (which is good for the consumer) they should be continually innovating to commercialise their next product.

People like the Tetra pak moguls don’t deserve their millions. I can’t see any argument that can be used to say that they do. Sure, make a few million, but end it there; let patents last a maximum of 3 years. These guys are essentially sitting on their arses making money without hard work or continual innovation. And that is wrong.

With regard to the Apple case, it seems like EMG renewed a bunch of patents with the specific purpose of suing. Why don’t they stop being babies and make money from it themselves, not wait for Apple to and then try to bring Apple down for succeeding where they failed!. By the way I am not an Apple-phile; they took us to court in Sydney when we trademarked “mPod”, (which we did before the iPod came out, but they took all “pods” to court) to be honest it was just their Lawyers using up their retainers and justifying their own existence and producing nothing.

ok so I am sounding a little socialist (my granddad was in the Communist party when he was at Oxford!). And I am not saying lets redistribute the wealth, becoming rich is fine if you do it by working hard or innovating, or both. Not inventing one thing once, and then build a giant lazy-boy (reclining comfy chair) out of Patent protection lawyers.

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