Learn the definition of patent troll.
"Trolling" and a "patent troll" are two different things. While Apple makes things with its patents (and so cannot be called a patent troll per se), there is simply no doubt that Apple does "troll" (i.e. file lawsuit after lawsuit on shaky reasoning like retaliatory grounds or just an opportunity to make free money; after all that's what they pay those lawyers on retainer to do, make money and the only way a lawyer can make money directly (rather than being hired by someone) is to sue the living pants off someone, whether they deserve it or not).
If only Back To The Future II's premise of abolishing all lawyers could actually happen. The world would be FAR better place, overall. Wipe out legal speak (actually write what is meant in clear concise ordinary common English that isn't 900 pages long on average; we used to do that back in the founder days with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but now the country is controlled by lawyers who answer to scum bags called politicians that cater to the highest bidder for bribes...er lobbying).
Right. Exercising patent rights is automatically trolling. Good job.
It is when it's obviously in retaliation to someone else's lawsuit and it goes back and forth over and over like it does between Apple and Samsung. Frankly, I think patents are granted too easily for too many things and need to be scaled WAY back, software patents in particular which should not even be allowed to exist.
The worst abuses of all are when large companies sue small companies, often knowing that they would eventually lose their lawsuit against that smaller company except for the fact they know the smaller company or individual cannot afford the lawsuit and so goes out of business anyway (which is the real reason to instigate the lawsuit in the first place). That sort of thing should literally be criminal, but it would be hard to prove. But it reiterates why I think lawyers are so disgusting in general. If they had any integrity what-so-ever, they'd never take such a case. Likewise, our justice system is all screwed up. It should be about whether the person did the crime or not. How good a lawyer you have should have NOTHING to do with it. The truth often suffers and dies in cases with mis-matched lawyers and real people go to prison on crimes they didn't commit and murderers get off scot-free all because of lawyers.
It is this abuse of large corporations over small companies and individuals that is the best argument against laws that make patents only work for large companies. That case where Robert Kearns came up with delay wipers is a good example. He patented the idea and tried to market it to the big automakers. They figured they could just steal his idea instead of buying it and did exactly that. He finally won cases against Ford and Chrysler. Obviously, even though he did build a physical mechanism, he couldn't hardly implement the idea without owning a car company. So under this idea of anti-patent trolls, would that mean he would have just been swept under the rug because he held a patent that he wasn't implementing?
I've heard of a patent on brake-light brightness based on how hard you press the brake pedal (making it more obvious whether someone is just lightly touching their brakes or suddenly slams hard on them). This is a safety idea that could potentially save lives. I haven't seen it implemented yet. They probably neither want to pay the patent owner or face another lawsuit like with the delay wipers. So the patent owner is forced to sit on the thing until it expires at which point they will all probably just steal the idea anyway. Sometimes you just can't win.
Copyright is very limited in scope and it has no ability to protect actual functionality. You need patent protection for this.
Why on earth should just
functionality be protected? If I created a patent on a piston engine for planes and someone else makes a jet engine design for planes, you're telling me that I should get the money for the jet engine too because they have the same FUNCTION? In other words, there's a lot of ways of getting similar results with programming that all involve unique coding methods. One person's Hoover vacuum is NOT the same as another person's Dyson vacuum even though they are both designed to suck air.
Most of the patent lawsuits I've seen with software patents, however, do exactly what you talk about. That person used my layout for a smart phone menu! That person used a WiFi antenna on a phone for god's sake! I patented the ideas of using it on a phone! Yeah, using one item on another item is SO unique.... It's all freaking ridiculous. Patent granting is out of hand and leads to lawsuits that are designed to AVOID COMPETITION.
In the field of pharmaceuticals, they're not really "creating" anything. They're discovering what chemical combinations might help with certain conditions. This costs a LOT of money to research and develop. Thus, a patent makes sense as the end result has to be EXACT. If another company just copies their end product and makes a generic, there would be no incentive for research. However, the comparison would be like the BIOS on a PC. Copying it would be like the medicine patent. Reverse engineering it without any information is legal because the end result either isn't the same code (many ways to skin a cat) or is a coincidence since no research was copied or stolen.
Thus, I don't buy this argument for things like software patents being necessary because all they do is try to thwart the market for all competition. Well, we live in a Capitalist society. That means competition. The first person to sell corn in a supermarket shouldn't get to corner the market on corn just because they sold it in such a market first. And that is what most software patents are. They're just copyrighting abstract ideas instead of actual specific code. I think it hurts competition for the consumer greatly and thus Capitalism in general.
