I’m very glad to see John Oliver bring up our absurd legal patent system in his Television program. Anyone with a brain should be against the notion of software patents. Not only does it stop innovation, it literally hurts our economy as whole. To put it into perspective, recently Apple who themselves are one of the most powerful corporations in the world, and have more liquid cash than our U.S. government. Recently had to pay over $500 million dollars to a patent troll. Apple’s legal response nailed it straight in the head.

“Smartflash makes no products, has no employees, creates no jobs, has no U.S. presence, and is exploiting our patent system to seek royalties for technology Apple invented. We refused to pay off this company for the ideas our employees spent years innovating and unfortunately we have been left with no choice but to take this fight up through the court system. We rely on the patent system to protect real innovation and this case is one more example of why we feel so strongly Congress should enact meaningful patent reform.”

Their is something seriously wrong when a powerful corporation like Apple who even they themselves have entire armies of lawyers lobbying our corrupt scum government (case point; H1-B Visas) are getting fucked by patent trolls, and yet are complaining about the broken patent legal system.

As a free/libre software supporter, this makes me wonder, if Apple doesn’t have a chance fighting patent trolls. What protection is there for regular people who are contributing free software to the world in an effort to make it a better place?..

 
http://fortune.com/2015/02/27/how-apple-lost-533-million-to-an-8th-grade-dropout-patent-troll