A federal appeals court has thrown out a jury verdict that had originally required Apple Inc to pay $533 million to Smartflash LLC, a technology developer and licenser that claimed Apple’s iTunes software infringed its data storage patents.
Not only did they win the appeal, the judge said the patents should have been ruled invalid.
“A unanimous three-judge appeals panel said Smartflash’s patents were too “abstract” and did not go far enough in describing an actual invention to warrant protection.”
Unfortunately too often the case.
“Smartflash also brought a similar case in the same court against Samsung Electronics Co, which remains pending. It later filed additional cases against Google and Amazon”
Hopefully this with help to set a precedence.
I have noticed some companies that are suing Apple starting at least 500 millions and above..
software patents are usually a bad idea. code is speech and copyright already protects it — nobody can steal your code. but having the same idea (and coding it yourself)? that simply shouldn’t be protected.
There’s a few inventions I’d disagree with this for. But it’s one in a million, and not worth the 999,999 cases of ridiculousness. Down with software patents!
But we never see the code, which is really the best part of patents, seeing how things were put together.