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Patent Sharks
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| Technology firms face a serious menace: patent sharks. These predators
| collect patents through acquisitions in bankruptcy proceedings, licensing
| agreements, or their own R&D efforts. They hide their intellectual
| property--to deliberately trap tech firms into inadvertent patent
| infringements. Then they sue.
|
| And the awards are typically huge. Pure patent holding company NTP, for
| instance, sued best-selling BlackBerry maker Research in Motion in 2006 for
| violation of NTP patents. Under threat of an injunction that would have shut
| down the mobile e-mail service, RIM settled for over $600 million--even
| though several NTP patents were later declared invalid.
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http://www.bnet.com/2439-13238_23-204648.html
Apple, RIM, Palm sued over vague GSM patents
,----[ Quote ]
| Quick, you ever heard of WiAV Solutions? You know, the owner or exclusive
| licensee of several vague patents on the use of GSM tech in smartphones? The
| company that doesn't make anything or even have a web site, but files so many
| patent lawsuits that some companies have taken to pre-emptively filing suits
| for declaratory judgment against it?
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http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/06/apple-rim-palm-sued-over-vague-gsm-patents/
Apple is still part of this problem, just like IBM and Google.
Apple working on streaming your iTunes library to your iPhone?
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| Apple's experimented with allowing iTunes to stream over the internet as well
| as your LAN in the past and quickly removed the feature (probably due to RIAA
| pressure), so we're not placing too much stock in this, but AppleInsider's
| unearthed a patent that seems to describe a way to stream music over the 'net
| to your iPhone / iPod touch
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http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/07/apple-working-on-streaming-your-itunes-library-to-your-iphone/
Recent:
Intellectual Property Regime Stifles Science and Innovation, Nobel Laureates
Say
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| Patent monopolies are believed to drive innovation but they actually impede
| the pace of science and innovation, Stiglitz said. The current “patent
| thicket,” in which anyone who writes a successful software programme is sued
| for alleged patent infringement, highlights the current IP system’s failure
| to encourage innovation, he said.
|
| Another problem is that the social returns from innovation do not accord with
| the private returns associated with the patent system, Stiglitz said. The
| marginal benefit from innovation is that an idea may become available sooner
| than it might have. But the person who secures the patent on it wins a
| long-term monopoly, creating a gap between private and social returns.
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http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1129
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