bigdaddyp

zoetmb said:

wizard69 said:

I suspect your view of the world has been distorted by liberalism. Curtailing frivolous lawsuits is a good thing, many are just scams to drain big corporations. The classic example here is getting sued for hot food, especially when said food is normally expected to be sold hot.

This "hot food" lawsuit, which TV news and politicians love to bring up as an example of frivolous lawsuits is a total b.s. example.   It refers to the woman who sued McDonald's because of spilled hot coffee.   But did you know that the woman did not spill the coffee?   That the coffee was so hot that it melted the bottom of the styrofoam up while she was sitting in the car and that's how she got scalded?  This was no frivolous lawsuit!  But the media loves to portray this as "someone sued McDonald's because the coffee was too hot!"


The problem is that you're not supposed to receive a patent for an idea, only an actual implementation of an idea - a method.   The patent office has gone completely mad in recent years giving patents for obvious ideas.   Amazon received a patent for "one-click" which Apple had to license from them.  No one should have ever received a patent for the idea of identifying a user and storing their address and credit card information.    Just because you can make a drawing of something doesn't mean it deserves a patent. 

I haven't read this patent.  If this firm came up with a new type of circuit to trickle charge when the phone is near charged and to fast charge when it's not and Apple copied that circuit design, then maybe they have a case.   But if all they really had was an idea to do that as opposed to how to accomplish it, it didn't deserve a patent and it never should have been granted.   But the patent office has become overwhelmed and incompetent and the courts have never known what they were doing when it came to technology, often awarding patents to the wrong inventors.   Read a biography of Edwin H. Armstrong, the inventor of the superheterodyne circuit and FM radio for examples of how well the courts have done.