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Patent troll Apple moans that others are being patent trolls

by on02 September 2011
apple

Pot calls the kettle black
Patent troll Apple is getting all cross that Samsung has not surrendered its tablet business over after Cooks' crowd started to make wide accusations about it stealing its ideas.

Apple was worried that Samsung was going to break into its lucrative neo-monoply for Tablets and used the patent system to get all sorts of injunctions against the outfit. Now Apple is apparently furious that Samsung is doing the same thing.

Apple's lawyers, without a shred of irony are moaning about Samsung and recent Google acquisitions and Motorola's allegedly "anticompetitive" use of patents. It claims that Android Phone makers are "abusing" the patent system. Yeah you might remember that Apple is the same company that initiated a patent war with its smartphone rivals and insisted that products be removed from the market rather than trying negotiate a licensing fee.

Most patents are governed by the "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" principle, as they were developed as part of industry standards. The idea is that companies are guaranteed to be paid, but generally have to license patents to whoever wants to use them.

Apple does not want to licence patents. It wants to control the market so it is firing writ after writ against Android. Now its lawyers are starting to find that the tide is turning against them and they “don't like it up em”.

The company's lawyers moaned in a Motorola hearing, that the outfit made false commitments that led to the establishment of worldwide standards incorporating its own patents and eliminating competing alternative technologies. Motorola [Mobility] has become a gatekeeper, accruing the power to harm or eliminate competition in the relevant markets if it so desires.

Clearly Cook thinks that role should be played by Apple. When Motorola counter sued Apple, it also included all those patents which normally would have been given an automatic licence as Apple was in breach.

Apple is also the same company that patented multi-touch gestures 26 years after they were invented and uses photoshopped evidence in European courts to support its lawsuit. Didn't Steve Jobs once quote Picasso as saying 'Good artists copy, great artists steal.' And [Apple] we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

The point here is Apple could have been good and competed against companies in the traditional manner it would have been OK. Instead it tried to rule the industry. As a result it is looking more like a tosser control freak who thinks it can use the courts instead of coming up with products.

More here.

Last modified on 02 September 2011
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