That is simply because UI has a major role in the game to play. It is the interaction point for all and having less control of it will mean you loose the battle.
@Mitch - I agree -- big companies using patent aresenals as a weapon are the real problem. Every week or so I come across a new story about how a large company is trying to get away with stealing a small inventor's patent rights. My story de jour is Dan Brown and his bionic wrench.
@Jason -"patent trolls" is a catchy phrase, and often is used to describe anyone who is trying to assert their patent rights against you.
Most of these companies labeled as "patent trolls" do not develop the IP themselves, but they acquire it from small inventors who don't have the means to effectively defend their patent rights against a large corporation. Small entities will transfer their patent rights to one of these "shell companies,"an entity who has the resources to go up against a large corporation's legal staff.
Imagine a world without "patent trolls." A small company makes a breakthrough invention and a large corporation steals it. Can the small inventor stop the large company from stealing their invention and their market share? How can the small inventor stay in business when the large company floods them with litigation, or undercuts their price? Without these "patent trolls,", the small inventor would be forced to give up his invention at whatever price the large corporation wants to pay.
Selling their patent rights to a large corporation is a way for small inventors to defend themselves against large corporations. If you know of another, better way for small inventors to assert their patent rights against large corporations, please share it
Ultimately, software patents stifle entrepreneurship. Big companies have arsenals of patents that they use to protect their innovation. Small companies lack these kinds of patents, and can't afford legal bills to defend against inevitable lawsuits.
not just Colt patents, a very short time ago the History Channel had a story about how Tomas Edison used thhe patent office to drive his competition out og existence.
Well SOMEONE is doing something novel -- Microsoft. Say what you will about the Windows 8/Windows Phone 8 UI, but it is substantially different in looks and animations than the model Android and iOS appear to believe is set in stone. Now if people start to take note of Windows phone, maybe there will be REAL progress... :)
Of course, the issues discussed in this piece still apply. A small firm is suing Microsoft for its Live Tiles, despite the fact that it's a rather abstract (and by common sense nonpatentable) software concept. That company never looked to productize the technology, but is now hoping for a rich payday by trolling Microsoft. (Despite the fact that its patented technology doesn't even look that much like Microsoft's Tiles in the patent images.)
I definitely agree with you... it's absolute travesty what has been allowed to happen with the BRCA patents. I guess it's fair to say that the patent field in general is being increasingly used and abused (though to be fair abuse existed throughout our nation's history to some extent: see the story of the Colt firearm patents).
But I agree with your premise that when patents are possibly leading to a loss of life (by stifling cancer research or other life-saving progress), it's even worse that when patents are leading to a loss of choice in the free market.
One good thing about these patent restrictions...they might encourage innovation beyond what everyone is doing right now!
For example, the icon/app/touch screen model of smart phones and tablets seems set in stone. But is it the right way to do things?
For me, I sometimes find it incredibly cumbersome to find the "app" I want, get it to load, and then stick my blunt fingertip onto all those little tweaky app buttons and fields.
So maybe Apple is doing Samsung a favor by saying, hey, go invent something completely different, something better.
This ego-contest in the digital world is small potatoes compared to what is happening in the medical field, where similar universal patents are getting through -- patents for a certain gene for example.
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In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M.
The smartphone market reached a significant milestone, a breakthrough that may cause vendors to celebrate but could strain the capabilities of IT service desks.
In the fall of 2011, around 160,000 students in 190 countries enrolled in a Stanford-sponsored online course about artificial intelligence. About 23,000 completed the course and got certificates, including 248 who got a perfect score. The university offered the same course the old-fashioned way to students sitting in Stanford classrooms. None of the those students got a perfect score.
As Mitch Wagner discussed today, Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr. The big Internet debate at the moment is whether Tumblr will be good or bad for Yahoo. Regardless of their stances on the future of Yahoo itself, many claim that Yahoo will somehow ruin Tumblr.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Ushering in a new era of cognitive computing systems, IBM announced today the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, a technology breakthrough that allows brands to crunch big data in record time to transform the way they engage clients in key functions such as customer service, marketing, and sales.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
