purdueguy

melgross said:

I’ve never understood why Apple doesn’t search for these patents, and just buy them through some entity, as they do,with other things. That would cut the possibility of much of this out. When you consider how many suits there are, and how much is paid out, plus the legal costs, it might be cheaper in the long run.

The problem with that is so many patents (and I don't specifically mean this one) are/should not be valid/granted.  There's no way to buy all the patents.
Downloading a configuration from a central server based on an identifier seems like something that has existed for a long, long time.  Now it's considered "new" (well new in 2000) just because it is "telephone in a data network" - which may or may not be valid.