[jhprks]

long live all patents (software or hardware)! they fuel invention/innovation. Edison, Bell Graham, Nikolai Tesla, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, they were inventors/innovators that deserve to be highly credited for the contributions that they made to the society, and yet so many people are trying to view a few of them as "evil" just because they made their ideas into reality before anyone else did.

[orthecreedence]

...or didn't make it a reality. What if Edison, Bell Graham, etc etc filed their patents and then never went into production. Then when someone else had the idea, they sued them for billions of dollars. Where would the US be now?

[chris_mahan]

You forgot Nobel, who invented smokeless gunpowder.