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Comment by recoiledsnake | Hacker News Reader

I think we are quickly approaching a point of patent detente. Google needs to get a few more patents and indemnify Android OEMs and maybe lob a few lawsuits at Bing etc. and MS will quickly cross license. Same against Apple.

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Detente? Between the big contenders, perhaps. The up and comers are still very much at risk.

And one sign of a "mature market" is that barriers to entry rise. So for the big players the game of patent poker is the price they pay to keep the innovations down to a dull roar and to "manage the competitive environment", for actual innovators It just means that the slope is steeper, and if they are at all successful they will attract predators like Lodsys/IV.

And while a few more entrepreneurs getting ground into hamburger by lawyers isn't that big of a concern in the larger scheme of things; it does mean that innovation in the tech sector is tamed and that we lose out on great products that never get a chance to compete in the marketplace.

Mature? It's artificially stymied and partially stagnated by the external imposition of ignorantly granted government monopolies.

patent detente

The patent trolls don't understand detente. They don't understand MAD. They're the real threat, not Apple/Microsoft/Motorola/HTC/whoever.

Are there that many examples of HTC, Samsung, Motorola having trouble with patent trolls as opposed to Apple/MS ?

Lodsys

This is a nice graphic summary of who's suing who in the mobile space:

http://blog.thomsonreuters.com/index.php/mobile-patent-suits...

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