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From the Editors: And the developers shall lead them


By SD Times Editorial Board
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June 29, 2012 —  (Page 2 of 2)

The judges will save us
Thank heaven for activist judges. Sure, not everyone loves that term, and in the United States at least, some people downright loathe judges who appear to take the law into their own hands. But we're entirely in favor of at least two activist judges: Richard Posner and William Alsup.

Thanks to their level-headedness, it would appear that two large software patent cases against Google's Android platform are being put to rest. In the Oracle-Google lawsuit, Judge Alsup not only exonerated Google, he structured his jury's ruling in a way that will make it very difficult for Oracle to appeal.

Judge Posner went even further in the Apple-Motorola Mobility case. There, he chided both sides for their claims of damages for patent infringement, and he particularly called out Apple for stretching the definition of its already vague touch-screen interface patents: Apple has a patent on touching a screen, it would seem, and it feels this also entitles it to own the swipe gesture.

Posner wasn't having it, however, and he delayed the actual court case by threatening to dismiss the case with prejudice, which would mean that Apple could never bring the case to court again.

It would seem that the horror of our patent system isn't going to be reformed anytime soon. Software patents do seem like they're not going anywhere, especially with our Congress in a complete deadlock during an election year. But at least with some very smart and activist judges sitting on the bench out here in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, we could at least see a reduction in cases brought, simply because companies may have to learn that our judges aren't going to take this silliness anymore.


Related Search Term(s): Apple, Google, Microsoft, Motorola, patents

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