[BBPandy]

All things D interviewed Google's Eric Schmidt.
The interview mainly talked about the Google / Apple fight, but he said something that I thought may interest people here. As we all know Patent wars are raging around the world. RIM has been affected by them just like everyone else. When asked about the Apple/Samsung trial in particular, Mr. Schmidt wouldn�t comment directly, though he did offer up an opinion that companies like Google and Apple were not victims in these patent conflicts, but rather it�s the smaller companies, those that can�t get patents in order to defend themselves, that are really in trouble. This is very true, for Samsung & Apple spending 700 million on lawyers is not a huge deal, but for the guy who has invented the next facebook it is. I'm reminded of Vlingo. We all know vlingo because it's been on BB's for years now, however what you may not know is that they have been bought out. When Siri was purchased by Apple, Nuance came to vlingo & said we want to buy you. The owner/creator of vlingo said no. Then Nuance said sell to us or we will sue you for patent infringement. Vlingo still refused so Nuance sued them. Vlingo won their court case, & Nuance's suite got thrown out, however by then vlingo had spent millions on legal fees & was almost bankrupt. Nuance came back to them & said, sell to us or we will sue you again & again until your bankrupt. Being unable to afford to defend themselves against any more false patent suits, the owner was forced to sell vlingo to Nuance. The owner/creator of vlingo having been forced to sell something he put his heart & soul into has no interest in ever doing anything in the tech industry again, and that's a shame. We the consumers are the ultimate victims of the current patent system. Large corporations can afford to wage huge high profile fights against each other, but they also go after the little guys who they think may have something that is better then what they have, or could one day threaten what they have. Big corporations can also steal inventions of lil guys because they know that they can't afford to sue them. Apple's wifi-sync comes to mind. A college kid developed it, submitted it to Apple, Apple said no, wifi-sync is a security issue, so he put it on Cydia. Then Apple said they liked his software & would he be interested in working for them. He said no. A few months later iOS5 came out with wifi-sync. Apple hadn't even changed his icon's logo. All they did was change it's color from blue to silver. When he contacted them about it, they basically said, "so sue us"

The current Patent system sucks. It was not created with software in mind & is only usefull for bully iCorperations & Patent Trolls!


Anyway...not sure where that rant came from....For the Eric Schmidt interview go to:
Google's Eric Schmidt Interviewed by Walt Mossberg, Kara Swisher - Peter Kafka - News - AllThingsD

[Zirak]

'tis the American way...

[kbz1960]

Money talks, it's a shame.

[OniBerry]

'tis the American way...

Sadly, it's the Global way....

[esk369]

Sadly, it's the Global way....

Yes it is sad and while America pioneered capitalism the majority of the world now runs on the same system it not clogging only US courts but courts all over the world and as long as the usual suspects have money to burn on legal war's of attrition then the small guys pioneering new technology lose every time and then the consumers lose can't just blame it on US. Patent law and US capitalism.

[esk369]

I'll just add this if you want to fix the patent system it has to be a global fix and considering we can't agree on capping C02 emissions or humanitarian crisis like Syria and countless countries in Africa and every other crisis facing the world this is what we are stuck with.

[richardat]

Side note: Was anything said about RIM?

I started to watch that inteview this afternoon, before I saw this thread, but didn't have time to watch it all....so I skipped around and maybe listened to 30 min total. I heard him take a few veiled shots at Windows, but never heard RIM mentioned. The only reason I thought it might have been was because I saw::
__________________________________________________ ________________________________
Eric Schmidt claims Apple versus Google is the only battle that matters
Dismisses Microsoft and Blackberry
By Dan Worth

"Schmidt also discussed some of the firm's other rivals and on the subject of Microsoft's attempt to fight back in the mobile market with Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 he said he was unsure how it would pan out."