[gozur88]

>If you don't know how to build a multi-billion dollar product without stealing prior work that isn't yours, WHY should you be able to sledgehammer your way into lots of money by preventing somebody else from getting paid for what they did?

The assumption being, of course, that you actually stole prior work instead of coming up with the same idea. From what I can tell, most of the time these patents cover obvious stuff.

A touch screen on a phone? Who would have thought of that? Everybody, actually. Everybody.

[HiLo]

Patents are a bit more nuanced than "touch screen on a phone."

[gozur88]

It's been a long time since I saw a patent that wasn't a description of the most obvious way to do something. Where I work the company is trying to patent everything (mostly, I would hope for defensive reasons). I have patents in my name.

And they're all written as broadly as the USPTO will accept, which is pretty damn broadly. The language is subtle, but in most cases the implications of the language are not subtle.

[throwawaykf05]

Do you read the claims and the arguments made to differentiate over any prior art the examiner finds? Trying to guess at the "implications" of the language is a futile endeavor unless you have a ton of context, because a ton of things need to be considered to understand the scope of a claim. In patent lawsuits, in fact, a Markman hearing is one of the most critical phases, as this is where it gets determined what terms in the claims actually mean, and hence what claims actually cover.