[admiralpumpkin]

So your implied argument is that patents hurt consumers because they don't allow one company's patented innovations to be used without restriction by other companies?

Your view is that the limit of one's benefit from an innovation should be the time between when one releases an innovative product and when your competitors release copy-cat products?

[Natsu]

Motorola Mobility can get an injunction blocking Apple products in Germany banning the iPad. What good would it do if we could have no tablets at all, because they each violate each others' patents over trivial things?

Seriously, one of the patents is over automatic linking. Okay, it covers something more general, actually, but that's the embodiment that's the most recognizable.

[scottmp10]

I see what you are saying and I think there are short-term and long-term consequences. Certainly an injunction hurts consumers in the short-term since they have less choice. The patent-advocate would argue that in the long-term this model rewards innovators more and thus more people invest in innovation, helping consumers over the long term.

You are correct that my personal opinion is in favor of no patent protection. However my original point was that Apple's patent actions have had significant short-term impact that hurts consumers. You can certainly make an argument that there is a long-term positive impact, but I do not believe that Apple is in any way harming the patent system itself.

[Hyena]

Unless you're spending immense amounts of R&D, that tends not to be as severe a problem as constricting development because of patent thickets or creating aggregately large legal problems (Lodsys, et al).

[joe_the_user]

A patent system that has most of its connection to actual innovation definitely hurts consumers.

Apple's claims against the Android tablets have been shown here to involve something like the claim that Apple invented the tablet, something that's also been debunked here.