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Comment by maximusprime | Hacker News Reader

Surely it's the rules of the game that are at fault here. You can't blame companies for using the rules of the game to their best advantage.

The answer is to tell everyone how much of a ridiculous unfair idiotic idea most patents are.

You shouldn't be able to patent software - it's trivial. You shouldn't be able to patent things like "Touchscreen used on mobile device" - It's obvious.

Patents should be reserved for things that aren't obvious, take a lot of research, and can be done many ways. For example drugs research. They should be denied and ruled null and void for most things related to software/consumer technology.

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Either you stand up for what you believe in, or you don't. The "rules of the game" as you say, were made by the people that are playing it.

So if you believe that some companies have taken the patent game too far and are a nuisance to society, why not take action against it and stand up to your beliefs?

I don't think attacking the companies is productive though. Lobby the government to change the law.

Yeah, that would be productive, right...

You can always expose and boycott the companies who do deals you morally object to. You can always call others to do the same.

Has that ever worked for a large multinational?

It's not the local grocery shop around the corner with the rotten produce...

It worked against Home Depot, "the world’s largest buyer of construction material" [1]. As a result of consumer pressure [2], they turned over a new "green" leaf, and are now lobbying to keep forests sustainable[3].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_depot [2] http://salt.claretianpubs.org/shake/1999/09/ss9909.html [3] http://www.mongabay.com/external/wsj-home_depot.htm

You really think a very small number of hackers who know what they're talking about, boycotting companies is going to have an effect?

Most of the people buying smartphones can'e even spell "patent".

Yes. If the really good people won't work for you because you're evil, that makes a huge difference.

Here, if you're old enough to remember, try this one:

"Of course Microsoft didn't care that a lot of the top talent wouldn't work for it for decades."

Doesn't sound very convincing, does it? Microsoft was badly hurt by that, and knew it. It eventually reined them in noticeably, and made them act more subtly or covertly a lot more often.

Apple will take time to see the damage, just as Microsoft did. But it will see it, just as Microsoft did.

Microsoft didn't become an evil monopoly by having the top talent. If anything it was the reverse. Maybe if they'd have some talented hackers working for them, they wouldn't have sucked quite so badly at making software.

Success isn't related to having top talent.

telling all your friends and explaining why apple sucks like that does help.

Having spent a whole lot of time researching the effects of patents in the pharmaceutical world, I am really going to question you on that as well.

Do you know who spends roughly the same percent of their revenue on R&D as the pharma companies?

Apple! In fact Apple spends astronomically on R&D. One of the best in the field.

You know who doesn't? Samsung Mobility. Moto Mobility. HTC.

But that's to be expected: we know they're not innovators, they're assemblers.

Cite please? That claim contradicts everything I've read on the subject.

AFAIK Apple don't spend a lot of money compared to the competition even on an absolute scale. And relative to revenue, there's just no competition at all given Apple's massive revenue (~15% for Microsoft/Intel/Google, ~3% for Apple).

Sorry I didn't see this, don't really have orangereds on Hacker News.

Here's a source: http://www.booz.com/global/home/what_we_think/featured_conte...

You're right, while continually be labelled by organizations as the most innovative, they do only spend ~3%

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