Obama administration vetos Apple iPhone 4, 3G iPad 2 product ban [pdf]

Can you show me the counter-example that proves this alleged favoritism? Some action by US ITC or recent enforcement of the Tariff Act that you feel is particularly egregious?

My previous experience with Obama-haters and pseudo-libertarians tells me the answer is probably no. But I am open to evidence to the contrary. Absent that I can't just assume an Apple/Obama conspiracy by default.

Infringement is not theft, it is an entirely separate legal concept.

Dowling v. United States

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100913/22513210998.shtml

The above deals specifically with copyright, but the concept is the same.

Secondly, in the post you replied to, I'm not talking about "intellectual property", I'm talking specifically about patents. I think that the copyright laws for instance, are far more balanced, and fair... lengthy time scales notwithstanding.

> It does not require physical trespass: taking someone's wallet

> when they put it down on a table for a moment is theft.

Indeed, it is also trespass on someone's physical property. This is obvious, and brings into question your own understanding.

Back to patents.

Suppose I discover, and implement a product, doing so entirely independently. I'm then summarily denied the right to practice it via a patent shakedown. Am I still in possession of it? Is one still in possession of one's freedom, if all one has remaining is a tiny cell to walk around in?

Let's now break it down in your terms. If Alice infringes on Bob's patent, both have possession, but only Bob, under the law has ownership. However, in the case of patents, Alice can come into possession of "Bob's property" without even knowing of Bob's existence, much less of the existence of "Bob's property".

This is not theft.

Now let's turn it around. Assuming Alice came into possession of "Bob's property" without being aware of Bob, or "his property", i.e., Alice discovered and implemented it entirely independently.

It is now Bob, who can deprive Alice of her own property, in effect taking the ownership of it, as well as having it in his possession.

If this is not theft, then I do not know what is.

One more time... in the event of infringement, Bob can still practice his art and make use of his property. Alice then merely engages in competition with Bob.

In the event of patent enforcement action via the iron hand of the government, Alice can neither exercise, nor even posses "Bob's property".

> Indeed, it is also trespass on someone's physical property. This is obvious, and brings into question your own understanding.

It really isn't. Trespass is about land, though in our modern day world of two-story buildings, it is more exactingly about space. See: http://thelawdictionary.org/trespass/

In order to work trespass into your convoluted example, you had to call upon several other ancillary crimes, like breaking and entering and the oddity about exploiting someone else's property, which I don't think is even codified.

Personally? If you want to figure out how to fix patents, I'd suggest dropping software as an example and going over to food recipes.

> Back to patents.

I don't particularly care about your clever table-turning unless you actually get the argument to hold up in a court of law. Patents are problematic: this is obvious to virtually everyone working in the tech industry and many more besides. Philosophical tricks are useless until legally recognized. It's nice to be able to play semantic word games, but it's an entirely different league to be using legal language.

Also, you seem to be under the misapprehension that I was defending patents. I am not. I'm objecting to your criticism of the word "theft".

Citation please. From reading the Commission Opinion document, it appears to me that what was in dispute was whether Apple proved that Samsung had not made at least one FRAND offer, and even if not, whether Apple proved the ITC didn't have authority to apply an import ban because of an SEP. Commissioner Pinkert offered a dissenting opinion (from a footnote in the report): "...Samsung does not dispute that it has made FRAND licensing commitments in regard to the '348 patent, and, as explained in his dissenting views, he has considered the evidence before the Commission in the current phase of the investigation and has found the weight of the evidence to indicate that Samsung has not made FRAND licensing terms covering the '348 patent available to Apple."

So apparently it is not clear whether Samsung made a FRAND offer to Apple. Most details of negotiations are redacted, so I cannot make a judgement. It seems irrational to me that the ITC's comments regarding the negotiations seem to require Apple to irrefutably prove Samsung's offers weren't FRAND, but don't require Samsung to prove they were FRAND. Unfortunately in this case I believe all of Samsung's other licenses involve cross-licenses of multiple SEPs from each party, so there is no easily referenced objectively reasonable license fee for the single patent.

In case of a stalemate in negotiations, I am not sure what the proper remedy should be, but an import ban on the would-be licensee seems to put far too much power into the hands of SEP licensors.

Veto? Pff. The best part of being prez is pardoning your friends! (And in Clinton's case, brother).

Here's starting at Johnson, great reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_or_gran...