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by notatoad 4772 days ago
I think this is very, very clearly abuse of the patent system, and kim dotcom knows this. every time there's a highly-public and totally absurd abuse of the patent system it erodes the system a little bit more. I would never suspect apple or oracle of attempting to erode the patent system by bringing absurd lawsuits, but it certainly sounds like the sort of thing that kim dotcom might do. I won't be so quick to judge him, given his stance on IP in general.

of course, i could be wrong and maybe he's just a massive hypocrite.
1 comments
will_brown 4772 days ago
>I would never suspect apple or oracle of attempting to erode the patent system by bringing absurd lawsuits, but it certainly sounds like the sort of thing that kim dotcom might do.

What about Apple patenting the rectangular electronic device(see here: http://www.google.com/patents/USD504889) and suing Samsung for $2.5 billion dollars with the majority of the claim for producing rectangular phones/tablets (see here: http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/08/03/apple-vs-samsung-who-...)

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notatoad 4772 days ago
yes, that's what i meant when i said absurd abuse of the patent system. but do you really think apple's goal is to bring about patent reform?
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will_brown 4772 days ago
It would be interesting to have real insight into what Apple thinks about the patent system. Obviously they are going to exploit the current system as best they can, as would any other company. However, the real question is financial for Apple, not ethical or moral, would they stand to make more money or less money based on a change? My guess is they want to eat their cake and have it too...meaning I am sure they want to be paid license fees on their IP and not have to pay anyone else, this would not be unique to Apple though.

Is KIM different? I do not know, but he is being tried criminally for a service that I have always believed is not fundamentally different than Google Drive, DropBox, MS SkyDrive, or iCloud. So it is interesting these guys do not stand up, if not for him, then for themselves as it would stand to reason they may be targeted next, but do you think the feds would ever round up their top level executives military style the way they did KIM?

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