A U.S. appellate judge ridicules the tech patent system

[thewayne]

Appellate judge John Naughton got himself assigned to a lower court so he could take a case where Apple sued Google, Apple claiming that the 'swipe to unlock' of iPhones was being infringed upon by Google's Android phones. The judge thoroughly lambasted both sides, said that no damages could be proved by either party, and threw out the case. Best of all, he threw it out with prejudice, so neither plaintiff can re-file it.

That, in itself, is wonderful. There are far too many stupid tech patent battles going on, and all it's doing is increasing cost to consumers and stifling innovation.

http://www.firstpost.com/tech/judge-who-threw-out-apple-trial-says-patents-are-a-problem-369223.html

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/US-judge-criticises-the-patent-system-1634026.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jul/01/apple-google-patent-case-john-naughton-comment

Comments

[silveradept]

Beautiful. We could use more than a few of those kinds of conclusions.