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Apple drops the patent case against Samsung Galaxy S III mini in the US.
So does this mean that they have droped the case where they won Billons of Dollars?
No of curse not: They just dropped a case that they had planed... before it became a "case"...

That other case was only about older Samsung phones and the Galaxy S III mini is new - everybody knows that..... So this news is actually ... no news at all.
Probably designed to make Apple look "fair".

In a settlement Samsung has agreed not to sell the SG S III mini in the US and Apple has reserved every right to attack Samsung again, should that change.

So the looser is the American consumer.
But it will probably be possible to get it via Canada Mexico Europe or whatever.

As a rule though, the Americans will be the only people on the planet that cannot have it.

I guess it is that invention of the square with the rounded corners that puts a stop to it

Well, I hate Apple and any lawyered-up enemy of consumer choice. Coincidentally, Carnegie Mellon University has just made a bid for the Guinness Book of Suits Records: Microchip maker Marvell Semiconductor Inc. loses patent lawsuit

A federal jury has found that Marvell Semiconductor Inc., a microchip maker with significant operations in Chandler, infringed on patents held by Carnegie Mellon University and has awarded a record $1.17billion in damages.
..
If the verdict stands, it would represent the largest-ever amount awarded in a patent-infringement lawsuit, topping the previous record of $1.05billion in damages awarded to Apple Inc. in its recent lawsuit against competitor Samsung Group.
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If the verdict stands, it would represent the largest-ever amount awarded in a patent-infringement lawsuit, topping the previous record of $1.05billion in damages awarded to Apple Inc. in its recent lawsuit against competitor Samsung Group.

I guess there must be some rules, somewhere to draw the line, but the current system looks to be pretty damaging to everyone but the lawyers. Maybe growth of the open source philosophy can help us poor Berserks.

Yes and the Jury should really not smoke grass before they make up a number.
At least it is very hard to find any clear thought behind the numbers they make up. Maybe it is a kind of "patriotism" behind it to really scare off bad foreign companies. That "system" really looks like bingo to me, and the rest of the world does not seem to impressed either.....

The US needs to have a good look at how they want to protect invention. As it is; they are discouraging it
The hard part would be to accept that invention actually can (theoretically) also take place outside the US.

viking60 wrote:The US needs to have a good look at how they want to protect invention. As it is; they are discouraging it
The hard part would be to accept that invention actually can (theoretically) also take place outside the US.

Aye, and natives and foreigners alike wonder why people are leaving the U.S. in droves at times. There's very little innovation any more in the states, IMO. Before the days of the greed (and that's what it is, really) of software patents (and probably hardware alike, although I'm really not sure on it), and other things of the like, the internet was truly free and software could be bought for a mere buck or two. Now, in the U.S., not only is it not free to roam about with, but it seems that with these things in place (such as the Apple/Samsung suit; there's many more right behind them as well), there is no innovation any more, at least not on the scale as it was when software was properly priced. It's a bummer, really. Things like this not only make the world flat (as in lack of humor, lack of innovation, etc.), but they also make it less nice, rather than more nice, to live in, in general.

I realize the UK has its own issues; however they nowhere near extend as far or as deep as these corp whores above.

The greed statement above should be obvious to you; however, to explain, what is the one main thing that people create suits like this for in the end?

Money. Power. Selfishness. More money. The ''It's mine and you can't have it'' mentality. I don't think I need to explain any further. Instead of to be shared, the world in general with people has become ''Share this? I don't think so! It's mine!''

Edit: I wonder if that mentality comes from the fact that these days, there is very little real industry in the states, other than war, so when we get something that is unique from war, we get greedy and selfish with it.

Let us stick to patents here. The general US system critique should not be aired on any possible occasion (It gets off topic). Innovation and patenting has worked well for the traditional industry and simply got outdated with the computer and the Internet.
Patenting is a way of letting you capitalize on your Ideas and that does not have to be "greed" it could be the opposite too (preventing the "greedy" from stealing it).

But it does not work for software! It only promotes the cold war, where everybody acquires somebody who can hurt somebody else. Innovation is not that important; it is having the ammunition that counts.

It is impossible to simply sit down and make a good program anymore because some jerk can always sue you for having invented the no. 4 and the letter X and therefore you have violated that great intellectual property etc.
Software should really not be patented - at all.
Because all the building stones and algorithms are well known since Pythagoras and Pascal and all the others who really invented Mathematics and Language without patenting it.

It should be possible to use language and mathematics without having a Microsoft Cross licensing deal....

In this case Apple is shadow boxing with Samsung, while they really are after Android; so it has become a science to fight over software these days - and that s wrong IMHO.

The patent system is a creation from Lawyers for Lawyers.

The are the only ones that benefit from it.