[tlug] Patents gone wrong?

[Evan Monroig <evan.monroig@example.com>]

Dear Tlug members,

As me you probably have seen the news of Apple giving 100 million
dollars to Creative as a settlement for their patent-related lawsuits.

I searched a little, but in the huge mass of article could not one that
made an analysis of the patents involved.

>From the ones that I read [1,2], it seems that one of the patents is
related to navigation menus in portable players, especially sorting
songs by Genre, then Artist, then Album and then Name. I couldn't find
the details about the patent, but how is that for an _inventive
technology_?

I vaguely remember that for a patent to be accepted, it must not be
something that could be developed relatively easily by a skilled
practitioner in that particular field. It seems to me that an idea like
this, as well as the password identification described in [2], could
easyly be simultaneously developed by more than a 1000 different *not
even skilled* practitioners...

I don't really know much about patents, but I have the feeling that
something is really wrong with the system as it is now (and not only in
the US, which is the focus here).

Any thoughts?

Evan

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4198360.stm
[2] http://news.com.com/Firm+seeks+piece+of+Apple+pie+via+iPod+claim/2100-1041_3-5602764.html?tag=nl