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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, November 13 2012 @ 01:52 PM EST |
Taking Devil's Advocate here, trying to see the anti-Android viewpoint.
The US Patent system grants to inventors a temporary monopoly.
The intent of this is that they can profit from their invention. Some
do this by making and selling the invention, others rent licenses
for third parties to benefit from the invention. Google gives its
invention away for free, it charges no license fees, it defies the
business principle behind the temporary monopoly.
To be sure, there's nothing in patent law or elsewhere that I know of,
that requires an inventor to make a profit. But not to do so is
un-American, like the GPL. Communist. We remember that silly letter.
And it's a double whammy, not only is Google not profiting, but
the device makers are getting their software without paying for it.
The opposition saw that letter too and they know it's silly in this
day and age to call this behaviour capital C Communist. Joe McCarthy
is long since retired. So they look for other means to undermine it.
What better than the overworked US Patent system. We saw the details
of MS - HTC leak out when the case went to the ITC. The patents
wielded against HTC were trivial, but the deal was sealed under NDA.
For HTC to reveal the terms would be a breach of contract, and US
lawyers and judges deal sternly with such things. What do you know,
here's Apple along with more of the same medicine.
On the question of Android being "free", there are two Androids,
the free one where a device maker takes the OS and does what he
likes with it, BSD-like, but cannot use the Android trademark;
and there's the "non-"free Android where the device maker
uses the trademark, and joins the Google family using marketplace,
maps, etc, and has terms and conditions imposed. This second group
are the targets in the present war, profiting without investment,
sharing code without IP rents, and Google is inciting them to do so.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: hardmath on Wednesday, November 14 2012 @ 07:31 AM EST |
However much I agree with the conclusion that the US patent
system is broken (allowing a variety of bad ones to issue
and form a barrier to innovation), weak arguments in support
of that should be replaced with strong ones. The unfairness
of Apple and Microsoft (inter alia) is palpable.
Oracle had a rough time going directly against Google over
software patents. I suspect Apple and Microsoft learned
from Ellison's misfortune (and from their own earlier
failures in other projects) that it's easier to intimidate
and squeeze profit from less able targets.
---
Recursion is the opiate of the mathists. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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