The patent war between Apple Inc. and smartphone rival Samsung Electronics continues to escalate, and there's only one way to describe the latest vicious salvo::)
That's right, it appears that Samsung has initiated a lawsuit against Apple governing the company's use of emoticons.
According to a report from patent observer Florian Mueller, who has been dependably covering the worldwide patent wrestling match between Apple and Android manufacturers, one of four new patent lawsuits filed by Samsung in German court is over, once again, yes, emoticons.
Believe it or not, Samsung does indeed own a patent on smartphone use of emoticons. It won the European rights to that "technology" in 2000, and interested readers can see the actual patent here.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Still more adventures in intellectual property
From the LA Times (comment would be superfluous):
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Oh, lovely. Is there about to be a race to patent the use of the letter "e"?
ReplyDeleteAt this point the use of patents to encourage innovation seems to have been completely subverted into ensuring that large companies with strong legal departments can crush the competition.