This looks like some heavy spin. The only reason why those stores were there was to put a positive spin on Apple in the minds of potential jurors. Same as the Samsung ice rink. The stores don't have a purpose now that reforms have been put in place to inhibit shopping for favorable courts.
Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls
81–90 of 200 posts
Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls
#82I grew up in Plano; the Willow Bend location was the "main" one for my area. I think this will sting. On a map it looks like the new location is trivially close-by, but the Galleria is in "Dallas proper", as opposed to the other locations which were deep in suburbia. In other words you have to brave Dallas traffic across the urban sprawl to get to it. It's not a mall people in the suburbs go to to just hang out; it's…
I grew up in Plano too! Closing the Willow Bend location could be a death knell for the mall - it brings substantial traffic to the property.
Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls
#83Here's something I don't quite understand, and where some of this feels a little hypocritical: Apple, the most valuable company in the world, could be working to reform patent law in order to make this a non-issue. Everyone talks about US politics as pay-to-play, it should be possible for Apple, Google, MS, Amazon, etc., to lobby for Software Patents, for example, to be reclassified as "math" and therefor not patenta…
The challenge is that the issue is created in the courts, and direct lobbying of judges is a lot less acceptable than lobbying politicians. And even if you solved that, tech would find itself lobbying against big pharma, and they are a lot better at lobbying the government than tech has historically been. US rules on patents are created by a combination of laws and precedents. Of the two, precedent is in practice mor…
> And when the Supreme Court overturns them, the next case relying on Supreme Court precedent inevitably goes to the Federal Circuit, which has proven very willing to engage in sophistry to issue a new binding precedent that clearly is the opposite of what the Supreme Court meant.
I get what you're trying to say, but I think your point at the end regarding the Federal Court trying to go behind the Supreme Court's back is false.
The Federal Court's decisions often propose a framework for patentability, then the Supreme Court rejects the framework without then building one of their own. When the next big patentability case comes up, the Federal Court tries again with something new, then the Supreme Court says "No, try again".
The Federal Court frameworks are often pretty mediocre, but if the Supreme Court had an actual policy direction in mind, it is fully competent to just develop and state the test and put this area to rest. They haven't because they can't. Every framework sucks, because the patentability concept is way too broad to be addressed in a single test. So then the USPTO puts out their internal instruction, and after we've had a 4 link chain of broken telephone, we hit the point where 'stupid patent x got in under the new "Case X" framework and the Supreme Court feels the need to tell everyone they're stupid, without proposing a solution.
Functionally, all this game of framework tennis does is make the field absurdly complicated, but lets not blame that on the Federal Court alone. There's plenty of other things we can blame them for.
Like how the fuck did the former chemist judges on the court not know what covalent bonds were? !@#$!#%$@#$%
Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls
#84Well, the eastern district of texas gets their just desserts for making it so easy for patent trolls to file there... GG.
It's just as easy to file in other districts as the Eastern District. Trolls like the Eastern District because of the judges currently sitting on the Eastern District, as well as the caliber of juries in the Tyler area. They're not super educated, easy to manipulate, and have a "well, they wouldn't have filed if they didn't do something wrong" attitude.
Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls
#85looks like Apple is shopping around. I guess we are going to see more cases landing on the desk of Judge Lucy Koh in the Northern District. Koh is obviously known for her landmark decisions in Apple vs Samsung and other cases that overtly favored Apple. Samsung, for instance, despite having won a ITC case and a SCOTUS decision on limiting damage on design infringement, saw their ITC victory reversed/pardoned by Obama…
Sounds exactly like what Samsung's secret trolling dept. was spreading a while ago. All "Samsung men" work hard, as the saying goes, eh.
It's a well-known "secret" in Korea that Samsung operates trolling department, staffed with full timer employees, salaried with perks, under cover. When an expose was published about 10 years ago, it was claimed the department employed 150 people, but who knows how many now.
Posting as a throwaway for obvious reasons.
Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh man, imagine the riots and changes that would ensue is Amazon suddenly started blocking purchases from Eastern district residents... "well we don't want to be considered as doing business there, y'all need to fix your courts..."
For maximum effect, organize. Amazon. Google. Netflix. Apple. All boycotting and IP blocking the District. Cue cries of corporations becoming more powerful than governments.
It was only a matter of time before the banana republic phenomena returned home.
Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
In between chuckles, maybe you can explain the corruption charges to me.
Dozens if not hundreds of articles have been written about corruption around patent trolling in the Eastern District of Texas. You have everything you need to seek those articles out. Asking others to do simple tasks for you indicates a desire to waste their time. It could fairly be interpreted as... trolling.
Offhand accusations of extremely serious charges like corruption breed lazy cynicism. It's not only fair but a good idea to ask people to support their claims: a little bit of intellectual rigor could make the difference between a valuable forum and an echo chamber where _everyone knows_ that outgroup x is just _so corrupt_.
It's really not good to say "just go and google it and you'll see how right I am". Antivaxxers, for example, say the same thing.
Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls
#88I suspect this won't actually prevent lawsuits in the Eastern district. With internet shopping and the new store just across the district line, lawyers should be able to argue that Apple is indeed doing business in the region. It will just waste a bit of lawyer time. It almost feels like Apple is punishing the region for it's patent troll supporting ways.
Should they not punish the region? The Eastern district is corrupt.
That's almost certainly not the intent. I'm pretty sure most Americans don't know or care very much about patent abuse, so to make this 'punishment' even remotely effective Apple would have to accompany it with a significant amount of marketing to get the message across. Have you heard of anything even remotely like that coming out of Apple? I mean, I guess they still could, but it does seem a pretty un-Apple thing to do.
Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
The customers elect people who can influence the president.
The damage is done, though. Federal judges are appointed for life, and only a higher Court (again, whose judges are appointed for life by the President) can overturn their judgments. There is literally nothing the customers can do to change the outcome -- even through the electoral or political process -- except by petitioning Congress to change patent law.
Right now this region enjoys a financial windfall from the business their corrupt judges bring in. As such, I'd expect the judges to well liked in the region. Could this be the root of their motivation? Most bipedal monkeys love social validation. If the tables turn and the judges start hurting the local economy, I'd expect them to become hated.
This is all very indirect, but I think it's worth a try.
Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls
#90Here's something I don't quite understand, and where some of this feels a little hypocritical: Apple, the most valuable company in the world, could be working to reform patent law in order to make this a non-issue. Everyone talks about US politics as pay-to-play, it should be possible for Apple, Google, MS, Amazon, etc., to lobby for Software Patents, for example, to be reclassified as "math" and therefor not patenta…
1. I think your assumption of pay-to-play is too strong. It's true to some degree but it's not as simple as having the right budget. For one, there are always factions working against you. There are always multiple jurisdictions and branches to consider, with different incentives. Add currents of public opinion and how they impact electoral and business interests on top of it all... it's a complex puzzle. So even the…
1) agreed, though I would think that the combined companies could have larger sway than others.
2) I mostly disagree. Where software is so specialized and valuable, I anticipate that it would be held privately and not necessarily made public. This seems to me to be better protected by copyright and not patent law. IANAL, but copyright feels more appropriate, and while you might be right that there is some majestic software that is so unique, but yet so easily duplicated (without the source) that it deserves monopoly protection, I don't believe that exists, but if there are some pure examples that can be held up, I'd be happy to change my opinion.
A less aggressive option than getting rid of software patents entirely, might be changing the way that we apply for them. What if the source code itself was required to be submitted with the patent application, and not just the design. Part of the reason patents exist is to encourage the disclosure of the design, so that when the monopoly ends, society benefits from the advancement.
What if the patented software was always required to be open-sourced? Would this be a means for easily fending off trolls? They'd have to show a working program, for one thing (it's not clear to me that they do now), and failure to do that could be an easy way to get a summary judgement against them.