James Kendrick posted "Apple injunctions against similar-looking tablets just beginning" (August 10, 2011). He says, "I am supportive of companies protecting inventions, but this is just ludicrous. You can’t ban products that look something like another, as that just stifles competition." I think it's complete abuse of the system of patents. For me this puts Apple firmly in the Evil Empire camp. How are the Apple fan boys going to explain away this one? (This makes me want to run out an buy a Samsung Galaxy Tab.) In the meantime Maria Korolov reports "Controversy erupts over SpotON3D's patent claims." (August3, 2011 on Hypergrid Business). SpotON3D is filing patents on "virtual world in a browser" tools that are not unlike other implementations. So... open licensing is not working in this case to protect work already done on similar software? Apparently from Korolov's report, there is still some question on how SpotON3D's patent might impact work by OpenSim, Kitely, etc. Overly-broad patents are another problem. TechDirt's Mike Masnick wrote a good piece with a link to a spoton (but not 3D) Dilbert cartoon (August 9, 2011). It all seems like the worst of capitalism with taking advantage of laws to stifle competition rather than moving forward with new creative ideas for creating new products.
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