Patent Trolls Target Amazon Kindle Fire
You had to expect it to happen, right? Acacia Research – a patent troll (we refuse to describe them as anything more) – are suing Amazon for patents they allegedly infringe on. Here are the groundbreaking and innovative </sarcasm> features that they want Amazon to pay for: a touchscreen that responds when a user writes on that screen and a system for handling multiple calendars on a personal digital assistant.
Seriously, these patent trolls should be banned, if not thrown to the bottom of river Styx or brutally maimed by killer rabbits. There should be some sort of clause for those who own patents that forces them to make an attempt to actually implement the technology into at least prototypical form.
Maybe even that would be too nice – force them to make a B2B or a consumer-ready device with the features they “own.” This whole patent issue is beginning to get annoying not only for the OEMs and Google, but for consumers as well. We wish Amazon all the best in defending themselves here. [via, source]