[zdw]

The distinction made by Gruber here is between two kinds of companies:

- Apple, MS and similar companies who buy patents and actually use them to make products.

- The Lodsys's of the world that use them as revenue sources and don't actually contribute any value to anyone.

In the blog post, Google is lumping everyone together, whereas Gruber disagrees.

Apple's patents that they've used against HTC and similar are for things that are remarkably unique - more unique than the Amazon 1-click patent and similar. Notably, they're not seeking out patents to use as weapons - it's likely, if not transparently obvious that they purchased the portfolios in question to remove the chance that those patents would be used against them.

I'm no friend of patent law (I think it should be reformed to function in a manner similar to real-estate property law), but I'm thinking that there is more nuance to this debate than "Gruber is a Google Hater".

[fpgeek]

Is this unique? http://www.google.comn

That (turning the text of a link into a clickable URL) is precisely one of the patents Apple is asserting against HTC.

If that patent is truly innovative (which it isn't, I'm sure there were web browsers and/or mail readers that did similar things well before the filing date), Google has to worry about the patent situation around Chrome, Mozilla has to worry about the patent situation around Firefox and ...

If Apple wins with such nonsense patents against HTC, wemight as well just shut down the US software industry and send it offshore (like everything else), since there are plenty of jurisdictions that don't recognize these bogus patents.