I just can't imagine why the WSJ wishes to protect patent theft, but it appears they believe a greater good is being served by SCREWING IP OWNERS! AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, not to mention all the OEM's, etc, must be working overtime with the White House on this one! MO.
"Those given to hyperbole might wonder what could be a clearer example of "irreparable harm" than Google stealing an industry. We hasten to add this shouldn't stop the president from intervening to prevent an ITC train wreck. But he should also make it absolutely and unequivocally clear he's not trying to deny any company its day in court, nor prejudging any company's right to seek a judicial ruling that would have exactly the same result as an ITC exclusion order."
Obama and the Smartphone Wars Unless the president intervenes, the International Trade Commission could send the wireless industry into a tailspin.By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.Like this columnist
Patent litigation is a game created by government, and constructively so. But the game appears to be getting out of whack in the smartphone patent wars.
Patents encourage innovation by protecting inventors to profit from innovation. Yet a steady thrum of patent litigation is also a healthy sign—it shows that violators are not being overly deterred from developing useful goods and services that, ahem, owe something to prior art.
But getting the balance right is not always easy. In the smartphone wars, a nearly unprecedented intervention by President Obama is being called for. But we'll get to that.
Though the smartphone legal wars have lately assumed a flavor of everybody vs. everybody, including Apple, Google, Microsoft and RIM, as well as handset makers Motorola, HTC and Samsung—and even Oracle, owner of the Java software language—it helps to keep the focus on Apple vs. Google.
In Google, you have an industry disruptor without many patents to bring to the table. Google has been disruptive because it's giving away its Android software free. Free is a problem for the incumbents, who don't have Google's search advertising revenues as a way to monetize their software inventions.
Secondly, and we mean this in the nicest possible way, Google is a patent violator. In a complicated software-hardware business, especially when so many functions are converging in a single device like a smartphone, patent violation is expected, routine and unavoidable. A 4G smartphone is said to implicate a hellish half-million patents.
If Google is the disruptive force, Apple is the one being disrupted. But Apple is different from most patent litigators. Apple isn't looking for a cross-licensing deal. Apple isn't looking for license revenues. It's looking to protect and maximize the iPhone's design superiority and unique user experience.
Now we come to a third factor that threatens to send the merry game off a cliff. In its 2006 eBay decision, the Supreme Court made it harder for companies to win injunctions against infringers—to ban their products. This, and the fact that most cellphones are assembled overseas, sent many disputants running to the International Trade Commission, an administrative agency largely empowered by the 1930 Tariff Act. The ITC can also hear patent disputes, and while it can't award damages, it can drop the nuclear bomb of blocking infringing devices from being imported.
One company sounding the alarm about the potential consequences is Verizon. Its chief counsel, Randal Milch, has circulated a chart showing all the tasty devices, including iPhones and Android tablets, that could be blocked by pending ITC rulings.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903327904576526130093390612.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h#printMode
"The world is a dangerous place to live�not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." �Albert Einstein
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