On Apr 8, 2009, at 9:18 AM, Dan wrote:
> > The international patent "system" is untenable. Because of treaties > and such, you have to honour patents world-wide but you cannot do a > truly complete search. It's a situation that the lawyers love, as it > creates thousands of unnecessary lawsuits every year. "Objection, your honor, assumes facts not in evidence". Simply because Elan is a Taiwanese company does not mean this is an 'international patent dispute', as no evidence of what patents are involved have been made public, at least in what I can find in a cursory search. This is likely a negotiating ploy, as per the original article "...the companies had been in licensing talks for about two years. " I don't think Apple would engage in talks for two years over a submarine patent. To reiterate, this is not obviously a case of patent abuse, but looks like a perfectly ordinary patent dispute, between two companies in the same line of business. Elan actually does make trackpads, quite a lot of them, as does Apple. The trackpads in question do similar things; I would be surprised if their patents DIDN'T overlap to some extent. That the patent system worldwide is not efficient, and that the USPO is close to broken is not really in question, but claiming that a normal court case involving patents is more evidence for an overhaul of the 'patent system' is akin to claiming that an accident caused by a tire blowout is cause for a complete overhaul of the Interstate System. Note: the greatest overhaul of the US patent system will be if the SCOTUS upholds "in re Bilski" which kills the "business method" patents most often involved in the sort of frivolous lawsuits Dan alludes to. This will be very happy happy news as a massive chunk of the weirdness in patents (patenting 'how to swing on a swing' and the like) can be declared invalid. -- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to Low End Mac's iMac List, a group for those using G3, G4, G5, and Intel Core iMacs as well as Apple eMacs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/imaclist?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
