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Comment by JulianWasTaken | Hacker News Reader

Are you intimating Apple has been litigious with patents? Or just saying you have no sympathy for companies with lots of money?

(This isn't a leading question, I have no informed opinion about Apple specifically.)

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I can't answer about the intent of the person you responded to, but my reading was that they were commenting on Apple's history of patent lawsuits, both as a defendant and a plaintiff. Particularly the prolonged IP slapfights between Apple and pretty much every other mobile device company, aka the Smartphone Patent Wars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone_patent_wars

When smartphones became ubiquitous they patented multi-touch, meaning those of us with early android phones had to spend hours hacking the capability into out devices.Pretty sure the original XDA threads are still up.

Then there was the previously mentioned rounded corners etc.

This is all the end result of allowing businesses to perform regulatory capture.

'Bout time it bit apple in the ass

We live in a world where companies want us beholden to them and not the other way around.

Two words: "rounded corners"

That and patenting the finger swipe are two of the most egregious hypocrisies of Apple's patent lawsuits. However it's really the USPTO that is to blame. IIRC if you're big enough you can just bully the patent office until they acquiesce. USPTO needs to learn how to say no, even to big corporations.

Which makes me wonder: Imagine if USPTO published statistics that enumerated patents that a company applied for and were turned down. My guess is Apple has never been told no.

Plenty of iPod patents including their iPod data cable should be expired now with finger swipe expiring soon.

But yeah 20 years can be a long time.

> Are you intimating Apple has been litigious with patents? Or just saying you have no sympathy for companies with lots of money?

This is a false dichotomy. Apple can be evil, and deserve to have bad things happen to it, without performing its evil through the medium of patent lawsuits.

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