China's ZTE and Huawei Join the German Patent Fray 34
An anonymous reader writes "Germany has pretty much become the new Eastern District of Texas, the world's most popular patent battleground. After Apple, Samsung and Motorola, the Chinese are now going to Germany as well to sort out their domestic patent squabbles. Huawei and ZTE, arguably the People's Republic's leading wireless tech companies, started suing each other in April last year. On Friday the Mannheim Regional Court held a Huawei vs. ZTE hearing, reports a local patent watcher. Huawei says ZTE infringes a 4G/LTE handover patent and wants its rival's base stations and USB modem sticks banned in Germany. More clashes between the two are coming up in the same court and in other places in Europe, including France."
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:We dont need patents (Score:2, Interesting)
Specifically, it makes the case that patents and other forms of intellectual monopoly encourages rent-seeking behavior rather than innovation, and also slows adoptation of new ideas. And most importantly, it backs this up with empirical evidence from many different fields, from steam engines in the 1800s to information technology. Too often, discussions of patents and copyright are based only on arguments that boil down to "I'm sure it works like this, but I'm not going to bother to check". But it is possible to test these hypotheses by looking at what changes when a new field suddenly becomes applicable for patents. According to the authors, the typical result is that progress in the field slows slightly, and becomes more expensive to operate in. The most recent such example is software, which until recently could not be patented.