Smartphone Industry Spent $20 Billion on Patents in 2011

[zakislam]

Google paid $12.5 billion for Motorola to predominately acquire their patents portfolio.

Smartphone Industry Spent $20 Billion on Patents in 2011 : Read more

 

[boyabunda]

Revolutionary!

 

[robochump]

Smart Phones is an ever increasing market and will only be a matter of time until smart phones are standard. What other industry has the ability to sale what is basically small computers (mobile devices) to a growing pool of consumers every 2 - 3 years?!? PC companies would kill for that! lol

 

[LORD_ORION]

They should have bought 20 billion worth of tanks and attacked their rivals

At $3.5 million a pop, that is alot of Leopard 26As

 

[superblahman123]

Apple has always stood for innovation. To protect our inventions, we have patented many of the new technologies in these groundbreaking and category-defining products. In the rare cases when we take legal action over a patent dispute, it’s only as a last resort.

We think companies should dream up their own products rather than willfully copying ours, and in August a jury in California reached the same conclusion.

I have yet to sh*t a bigger brick than the one I dropped after reading that. This is coming from the guys that sued a polish grocery store for using an apple in their logo?... It's like, they're full... full of... something else...

 

[acadia11]

But it isn't their innovation? That's the issue.

 

[twelch82]

This is exactly what you would expect to happen given the recent lawsuits. The recent litigation was a wakeup call, not just for the smartphone industry but the entire tech sector. You can get patents on dubious "inventions", and deal serious damage to your opponents in court.

If serious patent reform is not undertaken soon, it could basically destroy the tech sector in the US and countries with similar patent laws, which in the long term has implications extending beyond the obvious impact on the economy to things like security, and even relevance. If unfettered innovation can take place in other countries, but not the US and Europe, then it stands to reason that we'll fall behind with our hands tied behind our backs.

 

[robochump]

[citation][nom]acadia11[/nom]But it isn't their innovation? That's the issue.[/citation]

How easy people forget how smart phones were before the iPhone.

 

[noob2222]

Apple has always stood for innovation. To protect our inventions, we have patented many of the new technologies in these groundbreaking and category-defining products. In the rare cases when we take legal action over a patent dispute, it’s only as a last resort.

We think companies should dream up their own products rather than willfully copying ours, and in August a jury in California reached the same conclusion.

What a load of crap. Apples innovations come from sci-fi movies and "borrowing" ideas from other people.

Tablets come from star-trek, pinch to zoom and rotate from minority report, etc.

Id also venture to guess that the App approval process for the iPhony allows them to patent any programs they feel they need to "innovate"

 

[eodeo]

"Apple has always stood for innovation."

At first I read that as:

Apple has always stood in a way of innovation.

That makes more sense to me.

 

[cookoy]

Buying patents is not really innovation. If used improperly they just block others from further improving on a good idea.

 

[Shin-san]

This reminds me of 90s Microsoft. I remember huge Apple fanboy spiels about monopolies being bad

 

[Guest]

We will get back to the days of 80's were every single computer maker was different (in this case every phone will be different) and there will be no compatible way to communicate with each since we are all different.

 

[chewy1963]

Props on the light sabre wielding Android slaying the evil Apple! :lol:

 

[bildo123]

Now imagine if all that productivity (because money is a measurement of it) was thrown towards something truly productive. Perhaps we'd have batteries that lasted more then two days.

 

[Vorador2]

We live in an incredibly sad world when two companies who pride themselves on innovative solutions spend more time and money acquiring patents than actually innovating.

Or where skeleton companies that neither have employees nor products are hugely profitable simply by holding onto patents, blindly suing other remotely related products and bully the company into settling out of court.

 

[Kami3k]

[citation][nom]Vorador2[/nom]We live in an incredibly sad world when two companies who pride themselves on innovative solutions spend more time and money acquiring patents than actually innovating.Or where skeleton companies that neither have employees nor products are hugely profitable simply by holding onto patents, blindly suing other remotely related products and bully the company into settling out of court.[/citation]

You do need to patent something when you innovate it to make money from it before someone who didn't spend the money to invent it does.

You do realize that, right?