Apple getting sued over OS X Lion fast boot | Hacker News Reader

Apple getting sued over OS X Lion fast boot

tekgoblin.com

5 pointsmjurek5 comments

I can't help feeling that a relatively easy fix to this whole patent mess would be to make patents indefensible if a company doesn't have an actual product available on the market that actually uses the patent. Furthermore, only the company making the product can use the patent. - They could sell it to a competitor, who also has a product that uses the patent, but if a patent troll wanted the patent they would need to create an actual working product before trolling.

It wouldn't solve all of the problems of patents, but it would be an easy fix for getting rid of some of the more egregarious abuses of the patent system (companies filing thousands of pie-in-the-sky patents just so that others can't, patent trolls that exist just to buy patents and pursue actual innovators, companies filing patents and then sitting on them, preventing others from developing a new technology that would disrupt the company's product).

It would be a modest change to the system which would correct at least some of the current evident problems.

Maybe such a system should also have an expiration date.

Lets say IBM is developing a very new technique. They file a patent but they discover the market is not ready for the actual product. So they decide to wait.

In this case IBM doesn't have an actual product available on the market. It would be nice if IBM could wait for lets say 5 years without loosing the patent.

I would much rather that a patent not be granted until a product exists. If someone else beats you to market, to bad so sad for you. Patents exist to encourage innovation, and I don't see how that goal is furthered by letting someone sit on an idea without using it to the detriment of someone that is actually ready to do something with the idea right now.

Well maybe you give the answer yourself.

"Patents exist to encourage innovation" Sometimes innovation is costing a lot of money and time (research and development). When you can make sure you can protect the outcome you are more likely to keep on innovating.

The obscurity of the company filing the claim is one of the things that's wrong with the current U.S. patent system. Whomever they are, they haven't existed for very long and they obviously don't have any actual engineers working on things like computer boot processes. As far as I can tell they're just a bunch of guys with a checkbook and some lawyers who bought a patent much like any other speculative investment that could pay off.

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