Now it’s Palm’s turn to be sued by NTP over wireless email patents

Now Angel… It isn’t the lawyer who is evil… It’s the MBA who is evil…

See now situations such as these would be a perfect chance for the gestapo and other German ideas to have some use.

#1, Lawyers can not initiate suits on their own. Only injured parties may do it. In this case, NTP thinks that PALM will settle for a few tens of millions instead of potentially losing a few hundreds of millions. Because of that, they are prepared to spend a few million. Great gambling odds. But don’t blame the lawyers, blame the blood sucking companies like NTP.

I’ve also noticed that usually those who blame the lawyers for societies ills, are usually too stupid to really understand what the ills of society actually are.

…because as an IP generator myself I want protections against idea theft…

That’s the point of contention about patents: should they be simply for ideas or should they be for working implementations? It’s quite easy to come up with an idea (relatively speaking) if you don’t have to worry about all the implementation details. IMO, the patent system should never be used as a way to “call first dibs” on an *idea* if you’ve never even developed an implementation beyond some flowcharts and a pencil drawing for two first.

John, I’m a huge fan, but it is people who support IP law and then complain about it who leave me speechless. You wrote, “I understand the law, because as an IP generator myself I want protections against idea theft, but wince inside every time the laws get abused.” I do not think it is “abuse” of the law to use it. It’s like setting up a welfare system and expecting people not to use it. It’s like giving away free cash and expecting there to be no takers.

I’m a practicing patent attorney, and also a pro-property rights libertarian, and have written many pieces arguing that the patent system is simply a bad idea. Some of these, including my “Against Intellectual Property” article in the Journal of Libertarian Studies, may be found here: http://www.stephankinsella.com/publications.php#IP. As to what “adjustements” can be made to the system (other than outright abolition), I and a fellow patent attorney are working on an article with suggestions. Stay tuned… And keep up the great work! I love you on TWIT and Cranky Geeks.

You remark, ” … as an IP generator myself I want protections against idea theft.”

Surely what’s appropriate is protection against execution of ideas theft? Ideas come out of history and society and while they can indeed be new and stunning it’s actually the practical linking of an idea to a need that’s important and perhaps deserves to be protected by patents while if you’re a writer or photographer or software developer or something similar what you may need is some means of ensuring that you can benefit from the execution, the creative hard word you’ve put in, copyright in short.

Patents are fine for genuinely innovative engineering applications but utterly ludicrous for all the software and business process stuff to which, in a gadarene rush for greed, they end up being applied by a USPO which is both overwhelmed and out of its depth. They also hamper rather than enhance innovation, something which is pretty obvious anyway but has been shown by independent academic studies of the software and semiconductor industries among others.

People also tend to forget that the initial and long-term continuing aim of patents was to ensure that valuable inventions were not lost to society. This was encouraged by giving the inventor a short-term monopoly to encourage production. In fact Sir Humphrey Davy refused to take out a patent on his miner’s lamp saying that it was far more important that lives be saved than that he made money out of it, an admirable counterpart to the rapacious views of so many parasites trading in patents today.

#1 I like lawyer jokes.

What is the difference between a lawyer and a prostitute?
A prostitute will stop f**king you after you are dead.

#6
Lawyers may not be entirely responsible for societies ills, but, they are such a despised group of individuals (like murderers and child molesters) that they make a tempting target. Plus, come on, who are we kidding. They really are largely responsible for the corruption of the legal system.

As I said in a previous post, all too often, justice in America relies on the ability of your lawyer to manipulate the jury (and judges). As is often the case, the more money and social standing (which unfortunately can still be related to race) you have, the better lawyer you can afford. A better lawyer can manipulate the jury and find loopholes to eliminate evidence. Key to much of this is the jury system itself. A typical jury is “largely” made up of people that were either not intelligent enough to get out of jury duty or have nothing more useful to do in their life. These type of people are often biased and are easily swayed (manipulated) with emotional speeches delivered by a skillful lawyer. The system of a “Jury of your peers” was a noble concept but is fatally flawed and naive.

The “system” has been corrupted by these type of people. It is broken and needs to be torn down and completely re-thought out and rebuilt.

Steve