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submitted 11 months ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] Clevermistakes@lemmy.ca 35 points 11 months ago

Seems like a patent troll…

All three of the Touchstream patents in question are titled "Play control of content on a display device" and detail "a system for presenting and controlling content on a display device" that uses "a network, a server system coupled to the network and comprising one or more servers, a display device coupled to the network and having a display, and a personal computing device operable to transmit a first message according to a specified format over the network to the server system."

Play control of content on a device. So…remotes violate this patent? Cmon.

[-] PhantomPhanatic@lemmy.world 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Without reading the whole patent it did sound a bit too generic and obvious for the patent to be valid, but I'm not a patent lawyer. The comments from Touchstream were pretty great though.

I wouldn't blame a small company for not being able to bring a competing product to market against Google, but it seems like a long time to wait to sue someone making money off a stolen patent.

[-] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Big companies love to file bullshit software patents like this. I think I read a comment somewhere that said their coworkers used to have competition on who can got the most ridiculous patents approved by the patent office.

Instead of using patents for innovation, those big companies then use those patents as a weapon. They can basically sue anyone for anything thanks to their broad portfolio of bullshit patents. It's basically like a nuke for them, big companies won't sue each other because the other big companies also have nuke, so anyone who attack with nuke will also get nuked.

Patent trolls are different though, they are usually a non practicing entity. Suing them is useless because they don't do any business except hoarding patents, so they are not afraid of getting counter-sued for patent infringements. The worst that can happen is getting their stupid patents invalidated.

So yeah, I think software patents are basically useless and a drain to society.

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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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