pavyedav | boredom and inherent curiosity, in one

One interesting phenomenon in the past year has been the rise in lawsuits in the tech industry, specifically among the massive corporations such as Google, Apple, HTC, Samsung, and Facebook. Now it seems that little players are also getting involved for a chance at some lucrative sum. Please take a look at that link, and proceed to laugh, or shake your head in complete disgust at how the American legal system has been formed such that businesses/individuals can essentially patent any idea and sue anyone over anything.

The above lawsuit, in a nutshell, involves a small Florida company called Operating Systems Solutions LLC (OSS) that sued Apple because Apple’s computers were loading up the operating system too quickly, which apparently infringes on one of OSS’s patents. I’m not joking. That is the lawsuit. As the article mentions, Apple does indeed get a taste of its own medicine, because just a few months ago, it had sued other smartphone makers for “copying” multitouch. Apple itself has been in countless lawsuits this past year, as they clearly are making a concerted effort to knock competitors out of the mobile phone race, but through means aside from technological advancement. Classy.

This exhibits just how frivolous patents have gotten, and how they are essentially used as an arbitrary moneymaking scheme as opposed to a legitimate fear of having your intellectual property stolen. The above example is like LeBron James asking the ref to take away a dunk that Dirk Nowitzki had because LeBron started the game off with a dunk. He could probably patent the dunk. Really.

It’s a sad reflection on the influence of competition in the business setting. Companies do anything within the rules, which are of extremely wide scope, in order to give themselves an advantage. There is no sense of sportsmanship, camaraderie, or anything of that nature, because apparently technology is a dog-eat-dog industry. Run up the score? Sure, why not. Quick, no-huddle offense to get the defense offsides? Hey, it’s legal. Instead of looking to the R&D department, many companies look to the legal division to see what sort of trouble can be stirred up, and how money can be made a bit more conveniently without the work and toil of creativity and intellect. As Jerry asks George, “How do you live with yourself?”

Ultimately, I am a big proponent of protecting what’s yours, especially when it is a highly technical idea or concept that has been executed and proven. The latter part of that statement is important, for if it has not been executed or proven, it’s a mere idea. Just ask the Winklevi. They had the idea for connecting college students on some Internet platform, but frankly if they had not come up with it, someone else would have very soon, and the truth is that they were unable to execute it correctly and quickly (aside: what Zuckerberg did was shameful, from what I recall in The Social Network, but indeed it’s all within the rules.) My friends and I have come up with a lot of ideas in the past few years that we simply took too long to try and execute, and then we saw these ideas out on the market. Should our next thought be to sue those companies because those were our ideas? No, the next step is to go back to the drawing board and create something else, or perhaps improve what you’ve already created to make it viable.

I’ll be the first to say that I don’t know much about the legal system in general, but what I do know is that change needs to come internally, not externally in some half-baked scheme to try and beat the system. But in the end it’s the legal system that needs fundamental changing; after all, the companies are still playing the game within the rules.