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Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

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Re: Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

#3
We shouldn't blame patent trolls for acting the way they do in the same way that we shouldn't blame banks and stockbrokers for acting the way they do.

If there is big money to be made, and it's legal, somebody is going to do it - and if it's not you, well, your loss.

This is, and always has been, a problem of bad legislation. It is a structural problem in the system. The human race would save so much time, money, and energy if it tackled problems at their root instead of dossing around in the details, oblivious to the actual issue.

Re: Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

#4
post #3

We shouldn't blame patent trolls for acting the way they do in the same way that we shouldn't blame banks and stockbrokers for acting the way they do. If there is big money to be made, and it's legal, somebody is going to do it - and if it's not you, well, your loss. This is, and always has been, a problem of bad legislation . It is a structural problem in the system . The human race would save so much time, money, a…

What about when they lobby to keep the current patent system in place. Can we blame them then, or is that the nature of the game, too?

Re: Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

#5
post #3

We shouldn't blame patent trolls for acting the way they do in the same way that we shouldn't blame banks and stockbrokers for acting the way they do. If there is big money to be made, and it's legal, somebody is going to do it - and if it's not you, well, your loss. This is, and always has been, a problem of bad legislation . It is a structural problem in the system . The human race would save so much time, money, a…

What about when they lobby to keep the current patent system in place. Can we blame them then, or is that the nature of the game, too?

The very idea that lobbying is a) a thing, and b) a thing that works is a failure of the political system in a massive but completely unsurprising way.

Re: Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

#7
post #3

We shouldn't blame patent trolls for acting the way they do in the same way that we shouldn't blame banks and stockbrokers for acting the way they do. If there is big money to be made, and it's legal, somebody is going to do it - and if it's not you, well, your loss. This is, and always has been, a problem of bad legislation . It is a structural problem in the system . The human race would save so much time, money, a…

What about when they lobby to keep the current patent system in place. Can we blame them then, or is that the nature of the game, too?

Apple has a lot of money they could use to finance lobbying for patent reform. Maybe this will help them see the wisdom in that.

Re: Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

#8
post #3

We shouldn't blame patent trolls for acting the way they do in the same way that we shouldn't blame banks and stockbrokers for acting the way they do. If there is big money to be made, and it's legal, somebody is going to do it - and if it's not you, well, your loss. This is, and always has been, a problem of bad legislation . It is a structural problem in the system . The human race would save so much time, money, a…

If we didn't find patent trolls worthy of blame, where would the motivation to stamp out their behavior come from?

Re: Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

#9
post #3

We shouldn't blame patent trolls for acting the way they do in the same way that we shouldn't blame banks and stockbrokers for acting the way they do. If there is big money to be made, and it's legal, somebody is going to do it - and if it's not you, well, your loss. This is, and always has been, a problem of bad legislation . It is a structural problem in the system . The human race would save so much time, money, a…

The root cause of lots of bad legislations can be linked to corporate bribes (lobby)... which is legal in the USA.

Re: Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

#10
post #3

We shouldn't blame patent trolls for acting the way they do in the same way that we shouldn't blame banks and stockbrokers for acting the way they do. If there is big money to be made, and it's legal, somebody is going to do it - and if it's not you, well, your loss. This is, and always has been, a problem of bad legislation . It is a structural problem in the system . The human race would save so much time, money, a…

This line always comes out, for some reason, regarding patents. In other discussions we get completely different logic - eg: people get terribly riled up about whether Google is "evil" or not and it is rarely connected to whether it's legal or not.

The ultimate with your logic is that it would call for massive legislation to cover every facet of our lives - everything bad must be made illegal, otherwise nobody can even be criticised for doing it. I don't want to live in a world like that. Laws are far too crude for that, they can only work at extremes where it is clear you can put down a blanket rule. In between, people and companies behaving badly should be held to account through criticism and public pressure. We should expect companies to behave honorably and ethically and criticise them heavily when they don't.

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