Patent Litigation: Apple versus Its Competitors

Patent : A patent is a government license that gives the holder exclusive rights to a process, design or new invention for a designated period of time. Applications for patents are usually handled by a government agency. You can use a patent to protect your invention. It gives you the right to take legal action against anyone who makes, uses, sells or imports it without your permission.

Proponents of patent reform largely focus on the cost of patent infringement litigation to the U.S. economy and companies. While some argue that the type of patents issued should be limited in order to uphold the intent of Article I, Section 8, others claim that standards for issuing patents should be strengthened in order to reduce the number of costly patent infringement lawsuits. The cost of litigation and standards for issuing a patent is the focus of the proceeding text and justification for patent reform in the United States.

A patent gives the authority to deny people the right to use, make or sell the invention. You can only patent an invention if it is completely new and not an adaption of an invention already present in the market, and if it can be made or used.

The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, passed on September 16, 2011, was the most significant reform to the patent system in the United States since the Patent Act of 1952, which redefined the patentability of patent to include being nonobvious in addition to new and useful (1). The demanding need for patent reform had been discussed and debated frequently both within the literature focusing on patent trolls and consistently in Congress with the introduction of many patent reform acts that were never enacted: the Patent Reform Act of 2006 at the 109th Congress, the Patent Reform Act of 2007 at the 110th Congress, and the Patent Reform Act of 2009 at the 111th Congress (2-5). The enactment of the America Invents Act in 2011 after the failure of previous reform attempts signifies its importance in addressing the pressing issues of the United States patent system. The America Invents Acts specifically aimed to confront problems that were impeding innovation: the ever-increasing expense of the patent process, the exploitation of the patent system by patent trolls, and the unnecessary complexity and inefficiency of the patent process as a whole.

A patent is a twenty year exclusive monopoly on the right to make, use and sell a qualifying invention. This legal monopoly is considered a reward for the time and effort expended in creating the invention. In return, the invention must be described in detail to the Patent Office, which publishes the information, thus increasing the amount of technological knowledge available to the public. To obtain a U.S. patent, an inventor must apply to the Patent Office and demonstrate that the invention is new (as compared to prior technology), useful, and "nonobvious." An invention is nonobvious if it is more than a trivial, obvious next step in the advance of the technology. Software patents can be extremely powerful economic tools. They can protect features of a program that cannot be protected under copyright or trade secret law. For example, patents can be obtained for ideas, systems, methods, algorithms, and functions embodied in a software product: editing functions, user-interface features, compiling techniques, operating system techniques, program algorithms, menu arrangements, display presentations or arrangements, and program language translation methods. Since patent rights are exclusive, anyone making, using or selling the

A patent is defined as “a document issued by a government office which describes an invention and creates a legal situation in which the patented invention can normally only be exploited - manufactured, used, sold, imported - with the authorization of the owner of the patent” (World Intellectual Property Organization). Thus, a patent is a form of intellectual property. Patent infringement occurs when the defendant has violated this intellectual property, by making, using, selling, offering to sell, or importing an infringing invention or its equivalent. “For a court to find infringement, the plaintiff must show the presence of every element or its substantial equivalent in the accused device” (Wolverine World Wide, Inc. v. Nike, Inc., 38 F.3d 1192, 1199, Fed. Circ. 1994).

Patents are used to protect new, and sometimes improved, products. Patents guard inventions. The owner of a patent has the exclusive right to make, sell, or otherwise use and profit from a tangible item for a certain period of time. A business or individual must apply for a patent through our government's United States Patent and Trademark Office in order to obtain one.

Technology enriches our society by making widely available new and useful goods, services, and technical information . Clearly, as a society, we would want to encourage the development of technology so that we can reap the benefits they offer us. Innovators require an incentive to invent and share these technologies with the rest of society. This incentive is achieved by granting intellectual property rights (IPR) to inventors . More specifically, the incentive is usually achieved by granting patents to inventors .

The FBI has dropped a lawsuit against Apple, maybe this is the end for them.Last December, 14 people were killed by Syed Farook and his wife. The FBI says that they were able to do this, because of Apple's weak security in iphones. Therefore Apple’s security is easy to bypass by many people; and needs a stronger system. Apple’s security may be weak because, there is stronger technology in the world, people are easy to predict.Admittedly, the FBI turned to Apple for a reason on what had happened.The problem may have been solved for now, but it will replay in the near future (newsela).The FBI should have been able to stop the shooting in San Bernardino, if they were not concerned with Apple.But if Apple accepted the offer, would they have to

Instead of investing money into further research and development, companies and individuals are forced to spend the money on defending lawsuits and buying up patents in order to protect themselves from the Patent Trolls. According to Robin Feldman, Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings, unjust patent litigation has an enormous emotional impact on the defendants which are forced to participate in a broken patent system by the NPEs desire, and unmitigated ability, to sue for profit. It's simply extortion, except instead of offering protection from other goons, NPEs offer protection from the government which was supposed to stop them in the first place. The patent law is being used as a tool for legalized

Speaker and class; today, we will be discussing the topic of patents and why the answer would be YES. Today, I will state the three main reasons why we should not ban patents, and how the world would be much easier with them. My first point will be about freedom, and how people have the right to their inventions with no serious competition. My second point will be about credibility, and how people deserve it for their own creations. Finally, my last point will be about patent’s similarity to copyright, and why both are important, and both serve a great purpose. Having patents give people a right to their creations, and should be given credit for what they created. Having someone else steal your invention shouldn’t be allowed. People work hard on their inventions, not just so they get their glory stolen by other copycats. If patents are removed, people will not feel they should invent anything, or at least anything to bring to the public, in fear of their hard work stolen. Patents will protect those fears. As copyright is for books, patents are for physical machines, etc. Both give the creator/author the right to their own makings, and both give the creator a chance to earn

Patents are necessary for technology to flourish. They provide an economic incentive to take the initial costs of researching and developing of new inventions and discoveries, which later on benefit and advance society. Without the protection of patents, as soon as a product enters the market, competitors would be able to copy and manufacture and sell the product directly without having to take the initial costs, that others have, which risks putting a stop to the creation and development of new discoveries that continue to benefit society.

The U.S. has one of the best patent law systems in the world, but there are still those who take advantage and control it. Patent laws are made to protect innovators with there products from others attempting to steal their unique ideas. However, some people try to abuse these laws by creating companies that buy multiple patents and these companies are called patent trolls. Non-Practicing Entities (NPEs), widely known as Patent Trolls, never make the products that they buy patents for and instead wait till someone else uses the same concept no matter how small and then they swoop in and sue the real innovators. Patent trolls create distrust in the innovation atmosphere and put fear into inventors. They disrupt the innovation industries that

Trademarks and Patents are important to big companies like Apple because the trademark gives them the right to decide who and who cannot use their patented invention. This benefits them because if they were not to have the trademark, anyone could recreate their product without the company's consent and make money off of the product and they can sue other companies with their patent. People could resell Apples products in mass amounts legally without a patent. Apple's patent protected their creative and inventive rights on their product. Against Samsung, it protected Apples creative rights over their product, the Iphone. After Apple released their new Iphone, Samsung recreated it and therefore they put themselves at risk of litigation. The Trademark law allowed Apple to sue both the company and the distributors of the product because of recall.

Imagine a world where ideas and inventions are stolen off each other with no legal consequences. Imagine a world where Samsung wasn’t sued by Apple because legally, there is no penalty for stealing designs. Imagine a world where Alexander Graham Bell or Thomas Edison wasn’t famous for their inventions because someone else had stolen their ideas and created the inventions publicly first. This is what the world would have been like without the use of patents. Patents ensure that no idea is stolen, sold, or replicated without the appropriate permission. Every inventor has ad their fair share of troubling experiences with patents. However, an inventor that did not allow his dilemmas with patents stop him from achieving great things is Thomas Edison. Due to the patent process, Edison was able to succeed at a young age, own numerous inventions, competed other inventors’ patents, and inspired others to compete with his inventions to further improve technology.