In the Samsung suit there were many design and utility patents that they were alleged to have infringed.

Regarding the design patent you linked above, it was determined that Samsung had not infringed on that patent. Primarily because the patent's design when taken as a whole was not being infringed - even though some subset of its elemental features do. With a design patent like that, you end up with a very narrow definition of infringement - especially when it is so heavily superseded by similar prior art.

Only if the single word is approved and the court allows using a single word subset within a larger trademark as being actionable. If every single word is suddenly 'owned' by someone because it's part of their trademarked name, that dramatically reduces the available trademark space. And buying a previously trademarked 'name', unless identical still does not mean you have grounds to claim 'market confusion' - as the product name did not apply to the product at the time the trademark was applied for. Next they'll claim all synonyms too: Lollie*, *Smasher, etc. Where does it end?

If the words were identical, or so close as to be confusing (i.e. CandyCrusher vs CandyCrush), then yeah, they have reasonable grounds for taking action. But CandySwipe as a name neither sounds or looks anything like CandyCrusher. And attempting to trademark anything with the word Candy in it, and then start suing people before it's even fully granted is jumping the shark.

See Microsoft and their attempt to take control of the single word 'Windows'. They tried and failed to trademark the single word 'Windows'.

The only outmanoeuvring that went on here, was targeting an smaller entity without deep enough pockets to defend themselves against a heavily financed legal attack.

A design patent is taken in totality, not on a claim by claim basis. An infringement is upheld when the 'copy' substantially violates the overall design, not just a single elemental claim.

Obviously, when describing a design, you need to describe each element that makes up that design. Rounded corners and the rectangular proportion are just two of many of those elements. How else can a design be described if not by listing the elements that make up the design? If it was a CAD file that described the design, we'd probably have a meme of 'Apple suing over a tangential curve to line intersect'.

The meme comes from people with a severe lack of understanding about how the patent system works, and the difference between a design patent and a utility patent. Either that, or they've made the invalid assumption that Apple somehow was able to have approved a patent with just a single claim of 'device in the shape of a rounded rectangle'.

I'm here to both point out that the meme is not describing reality, and also not an equivalent analogy to the issue as described in article summary.

I know the Slashdot meme of Apple suing over 'rounded corners' is prevalent. However, the actual design patent Apple were suing over contained numerous clauses (including operational UI elements as rendered by software) that the courts evaluate for infringement as a whole. It had nothing to do with Apple claiming violation of a singular clause of their design patent.

The only way that the Samsung/Apple example resembles the summary is that it involves lawyers and 'IP'.

What the summary describes is a lowest of low attempt that goes well beyond any real legal entitlement, by bullying an opponent in a way that requires significant financial backing to defend. And since the financial disparity between the parties is so large, mounting a legal defence is very difficult. If this were two equal players, the CandyCrush lawyers would likely be slapped out of court.

If you want to bring up an Apple comparison, it would be far better to find one about i* trademark claims.

Is that you Westley?

Sadly, there is so much truth to what you've written.

"...tidy up that graphic, and we'll ship next Monday."

The problem isn't that the developer has created a bug that he has to fix. It's that the cyclic process of development / debugging / testing are not being correctly accounted. Or more than likely, the second two phases are being ignored as part of the accounting.

If the developer were to be responsible for his bugs, then his time must have already included the debugging and testing phases. By the time the process is complete, there are a number of people in the loop who are 'responsible' for the remaining bug. If the process has not been correctly established, then the problem isn't with the developer, it is with the management. Therefore, the management should be paying out of their pocket for the developer to fix the bug.

There is no inherent reason why an employee that is part of a much larger process is somehow responsible for the entire process. Even the bricky isn't responsible that someone else gave him a bad batch of cement. The company should have planned for this and padded their estimate with appropriate margin to mitigate expected (and to some degree unexpected) risk.

Too many 'managers' do not understand that debugging and testing take more resources than that required to write the initial lines of code.

Mods, please fix the bad mod on the parent.

Another problem with RFID (in addition to the security issue) is that it encourages physical wallet and phone theft (mugging/pick pockets/etc). This is because simply having the card in hand is sufficient to complete a purchase - there is no PIN or signature requirement. And without your phone it'll take a while before you can call your bank and cancel the cards (since you're too busy reporting it to the police, and you'll need some more information like bank phone numbers, etc before you can cancel your cards).

Another sneaky one is people pushing the RFID pos reader onto someone else's purse wallet in the shop/bar/pub/etc. Or a taking the wallet/purse, using the card without even removing it, and putting the wallet/purse back.

The only thing currently preventing this going to extremes is video surveillance at the point of sale to identify the users of the stolen cards.

That's the beauty of just raising the fares to extortionate levels. You can even skim the extra revenue to pay for unrelated things like corporate crony^w^w roads. Which is great, because I drive anyway.

It's all about market capture and what people are willing to pay to save 2 hours a day against driving through the parking lot they call a freeway.

I could never fathom why it was possible in time gone by to build this infrastructure in the first place when the public transport clientele was so much smaller than it is today. Yet, all of a sudden it costs so much more with so little 'return'.

The answer could be that there are many more hands in the city's pocket that are being greased to the detriment of the people that live/travel there.

I'm not inherently against short/medium term price increases for well considered long term plans that involve big up-front costs. As long as the plan is real and not tied to contracts that have more to do with fattening corporate wallets than providing the desired goal of improving the city's transport network/roads/zoning/efficiency/etc.

Definitely not as quick and easy as raising the fare. The best thing about raising the fares is that you don't even need to try to improve anything. Just keep the fares going up and up! Costs are the same, and the differential increase in profit can be used to expand the city's infrastr^w coffers.

So instead of putting on more buses/trains and improving the transport infrastructure, you just keep raising the fair to reduce patronage. Great idea! If they quadruple the fairs tomorrow, they might even be able to get rid of a few entire routes. Less buses, less employees, and therefore lower payroll costs.

I smell profit here!

More importantly, if you have your own lawyers on your payroll, the cost is negligible. Especially when you consider that those lawyers seemingly only spend 5 minutes on Google doing 'due diligence'. If they spent much longer, then far less obvious/pre-existing patent applications would be made. That, of course, doesn't excuse the patent examiner for rubber stamping it after seemingly spending another 5 minutes Googling the claims.

I'd go as far as saying it should definitely not be patentable. This is the most obvious embodiment of a typical just-in-time manual practice "on a computer".

Any patent awarded should err on the side of invalid until proven valid, not the other way around. Just like proving guilt is required before someone can be deprived of freedom, so should a patent be held to the same standard before it can be used to deprive others of freedom to pedal their wares.

As an embedded systems programmer, I worked on at least 100 different systems between 1995 and 1999. Some problems were just cosmetic, others caused overrun buffers, infinite loops, code paths that would no longer run, and of course the usual date comparison and cosmetic problems.

The 'doom' wasn't so much a single system going down, but a sudden coordinated failure of hundreds or thousands of systems at the same time. At least 1 in 5 of the systems we worked on were 'critical' systems that would very likely have caused serious damage, injury and/or loss of life if they weren't fixed. The company I worked for primarily dealt with equipment used in hospitals, power plants / utilities, and industrial equipment. Other companies would audit a facility (eg. a hospital), and we'd be called whenever they found something that hadn't already been dealt with.

Sometimes we didn't have access to source code, and had to recommend replacements or rewrites.

Is an extra $1k enough to get you to leave one job for another. I don't think so.

You can also tell your new employer that your new position is far more senior/challenging/responsible/etc than your previous position. Your new employer has a baseline number, knows a little of your previous job (from your resume), and will tell you in detail what the new job entails. You on the other hand also have the exact details of your previous job to make the comparison a little more ambiguous.

Worse is if you don't know what anyone else was being paid. Then you end up agreeing to $85k (because you were previously being being paid $80k) when you should have been asking for at least $129k while a few of your colleagues were being paid $128k at your previous place of employ. Remember, you're up against a professional negotiator. Not some guy that does it a few times a decade.