If you were following the Nortel patent sale recently you may have been a bit caught off guard by Google's comments as to why they wanted the patents. It wasn't to bring new technology to the market, it wasn't for licensing fees, it was to use as a shield from patent law suits. In fact a consortium group (Apple, Microsoft, etc.) ended up buying the group of 6,000 patents in question for over $4 billion.
Another big case recently came when Apple won their patent suit against HTC. You might say, well that's what HTC deserves for ripping off Apple's iPhone, but the devil is in the details. If you read the patent language you'll quickly see that this lawsuit was based not on a specific product, but on very generalized programming language. In essence the language says they are patenting a device which receives a signal, then displays a number, and lets the use decide whether to answer the call or not. With this language Apple can now block HTC from being able to sell Android based smart phones in the United States. In fact if Apple continues to succeed in court they will essentially be able to block every manufacturer from selling a smart phone in the United States. Because lets face it, display a phone number and let the user decided to answer is about as generic as it gets for a phone device.
Patents were a part of the constitution to encourage developing new ideas, but in the world of silicon valley patents are having the opposite effect. There was a very good piece on This American Life which looked at patents in this light this past weekend.
TECH NOTE!
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