Patent Wars

I've been reading the ridiculous patent wars that are currently being fought in courts of law around the world about how Android phones are infringing patents..... but if you look at these patents

PCT/GB98/03016   <--- for instance

They relate to the vaguest description of an idea, and in some cases like the one above, they talk about devices that have long since gone to landfill.... the one above was filed in 1998 and U.S. Patent No. 6,956,564 on "portable computers" (not previously asserted; Apple acquired this one from British Telecom in 2008) are suing HTC over some vague use of a touch screen as described in the patent and touch screens didn't even exist in 1998 not for hand portable computers as it's called in the patent anyway !!!

No make no mistake about this, this is about the inexorable march of  Linux/Android into places where previously only bespoke software sat, such as the Apple iPhone and only now is Apple beginning to wake up  that their market share is soon going to disappear especially in their stronghold America..... the iPhone is selling stronger in the States than anywhere else but Android is catching up, just like it's overtaken Apple in Europe it will do the same in the States.

So this is why Apple are buying up stale 1998 patents off British Telecom, probably because their legal eagles can see some mileage in them, after all stalling sales of Android phones anywhere in the world means lost profits for the patent losers and increased profits for Apple.... But personally I see no honour in wheeling out a stale old patent which was originally filed for the likes of  Psion Series 5, and the HP320LX

 As you can see neither of these dinosaurs have anything in common with a modern Android phone,  and I fail to see how they can apply a patent for a device manufactured in 1998 by a COMPLETELY different company which has been simply purchased by another company on the off chance that it might be useful in fighting off a product which is better purely because of design and how that can be enforced in a court of law is beyond me...... The problem is though Linux/Android has SO many developers to push out a change takes only a few days and in some cases just a few hours, so they are behaving a bit like King Canute commanding the tide to halt

(although that isn't a very good example because King Canute didn't try to stop the tide to show how powerful he was as a king "Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws." In other words that other human construct...... God.....or as I like to call it "the fall back when nothing else fits" )

 Anyway I digress, it's all delaying tactics the design cycle of Android is accelerating, Apple on the other hand doesn't have the resources to develop as quickly as Android.... hence the litigiousness we are seeing now..... or in plain speak "blind panic" .... Steve Jobs has gone !!!! what are we going to do now ???? Sue them !!! every last one of them !!!! damn it !!!!

Laughable......Muah ha ha ha ha ha ha