Dutch Court Says Android 2.3 Violates Apple Patents

jfruhlinger writes "A Dutch court came to some interesting conclusions in the Apple-Samsung patent case raging there. The court rejected claims that Samsung stole intellectual copyrights, or that it slavishly copied Apple's iPad and iPhone. It did decide that Android 2.3 violated an Apple photo management patent — but said that Samsung could get around this simply by upgrading its phones to Android 3.0."

Re:A fine example of...

[mwvdlee]

There is no honest use for software patents.

Yes there is. Some software methods do require the investment and effort which patents are supposed to temporarily protect. The problem is the duration of "temporary"; only a few years should be enough for software IMHO. And ofcourse the issue that most software patents require very little investment and effort; their implementation may take more time and money, but that's what copyright is for.

1/10000 of the functionality

[Pastis]

So one can block the sale of a device on a whole continent because it possibly infringes on a functionality that represents 1/10000 of the default functionality of the phone. My phone can call, video call, chat, do my email, take and edit videos, upload pictures to the net, scan bar codes for maintaining list of books and dvds, do anything a browser can do, play games like a console, be my alarm clock, and I can't buy it because of the way it reacts if I scroll half way my pictures in the photo editor ?

This is just wrong.