I believe people who try to just misuse mod points against me are real trolls and Slashdot should make sure that such people don't get mod points again too soon.

You can be sure the damage award would not be zero even if nobody ever used it. Just the act of publishing it creates damage. And can you or anyone else prove that no one ever downloaded the file, relied on an Apache license header and consequently built it into something (Android or not)?

I'll do a couple of follow-up posts on my blog these days to respond to some of the misconceptions and misinformation out there.

My blog never made a specific claim about Android devices containing certain code. From a copyright law point of view, however, putting software online for everyone to download means "to distribute", or "to ship", such code, and distributing, or shipping, infringing code makes someone liable.

Ed Burnette, whose post is referenced here, does not seem to understand even basic copyright-related terminology and concepts. He's wrong on almost everything he wrote and I'll debunk itI already left some comments below his article.

It's also wrong, as stated above, that Google "deleted" those files. They are still in the Froyo (Android 2.2) and Gingerbread (2.3) trees. At least they were when I last checked, which was yesterday. They are just not in the tree for future versions.

There is so much out there that's wrong, and I'll deal with it step by step.

I've had many discussions with politicians and participated in a number of parliamentary and governmental roundtables. There are some great economic studies that are critical of the patent system -- but there's no shortage of studies supporting it (and of companies funding such studies). So the only way that politicians would act is that businesses themselves exercise effective pressure against the patent system.

P.S. don't forget, for instance, that most of Apple's patents will be software patents (and therefore limited to the US)

That's a misconception. Just look at these examples (including some of the patents Apple asserts against Android). Also, consider that Apple sued Nokia in the UK as well (a couple of months ago) over 9 European software patents.

whereas most of the Nokia/GSM/Motorola patents will be hardware patents,

When I publish my PDF diagrams and analysis of the Apple-Nokia dispute, you'll see that the share of software patents among Nokia's patents is far greater than you believe at this stage.

But neither iOS nor Android is going away.

Sure. Nobody I know ever claimed that one of the two would go away. However, those patent deals can have a significant impact on the competitive landscape. It's a matter of future market share, not a question of life or death.

symbolset, it's regrettable that after my facts-based reply you just go off-topic here with unclear and unspecified allegations. Instead of a pathetic attempt to smear, you should take a look at the patent portfolios in question. A lot of people believe Google is such a big company that it should own a lot of key patents, but it owns relatively few patents and most of them are related to search engine technologies. Also, even though you mentioned HTC, you won't seriously believe that Apple would lose sleep over HTC's patent portfolio...