To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
You are talking about a company with a minimum of 30,000+ patents, the way they've been filing if they have less than 200,000 on file I'd be amazed. Now when you look at the numbers and also look at how horribly vague the USPTO has allowed patents to be for the last 20+ years?
Your argument is like saying "Well just because you have a quad 50 cal with 10,000 rounds doesn't mean I can't walk across the street without you hitting me" which theoretically may be true...theoretically. But if I was your family I'd be picking out the casket and if you go up against a company the size of MS with a patent warchest from hell? Well i hope you have a seriously fat wallet friend, because you'd have better odds of winning the powerball than getting out of there scott free, just ask TomTom.




Member since:
2010-06-09
No, you don't know; you're making an assumption based on deductive logic. A reasonable and likely accurate assumption nonetheless, but still an assumption (and let me point out I'm not saying this stuff to berate you, I'm just setting up a point).
This is a big part of the problem; towering giants like Microsoft are allowed to throw around claims of infringement without having to provide any substantial evidence. Somehow this is perfectly fine. If I made the public statement "LG microwaves are shown to give babies cancer" without a shred of evidence, LG could sue me for libel. Yet MS/Apple claiming thievery is perfectly acceptable as long as they point to a mountainous landscape of paperwork behind them and say, "See all that? Clearly we have it in there somewhere... 'it' being the thing we're claiming you stole... which we're not going to name."
How crap like this doesn't fall under libel, extortion, etc., I have no idea.