More to the point, we could simply vaporize every hunk of nuclear waste generated by nuclear power straight into the atmosphere, and it would _still_ be better than coal.

Apple are suing because Samsung smart phones are taking sales away from Apple phones.

Apple is suing because that's how the game is played at this point. Trot out your patents, so does the other guy, and settle on some cross-licensing agreement that (if you've calculated right) puts you in a better position than your competitor. Or encourages your other competitors to follow suit in licensing your patents. You clearly do not understand this level of "business chess". That's alright, but you just really ought to shut up about it until you learn more.

...they've got a lot to lose if phone sales are threatened, namely their astronomical share price.

Share price is an arbitrary value without knowing market cap. If you actually meant "share price", you have no idea how the stock market works. If you actually meant "market cap", you might understand how the market works, but are laughably far from reality. AAPL is currently trading at a 15.92 P/E ratio, compared to a 19.32 P/E for GOOG, an astronomical 2,424.63 P/E for LNKD, and 10.15 P/E for MSFT. However, AAPL has (as of last quarter) nearly 10% of their share price in cold, hard, liquid cash. Assuming a zero growth rate, AAPL will have more cash on hand than its current share price in less than five years.

So tell me, please, how Apple's share price is astronomical.

Rybka is sold commercially. Seriously, have you perhaps considered briefly familiarizing yourself with the obvious facts surrounding an issue before mindlessly commenting on it?

Being a power of two is not of as much use as is being an even multiple of 2, 3, 4, and 6, giving you many possible factors to divide evenly by.

But they don't. I've not once been sent to somebody who can't help me by dialling "0" repeatedly or repeating "operator" to the voice recognition system. Not to mention, it's infinitely frustrating when they make me waste a half hour dialling in identifying numbers, my address, etc., only for the CSR to ask for the exact same information the second they pick up the phone.

FTFA: "The way to read a patent claim is that it's only infringed if the accused technology is implemented in its entirety—all of the characteristics must be matched."

They didn't patent touch screens. They patented a multi-touch interface.

Look. This was the state-of-the-art of smartphones in 2007. This was the state-of-the-art in 2008. They're not even in the same state, much less the same ballpark.

Similar products? Point me to the pre-iPhone multi-touch smartphone. Hell, point me to the first multi-touch smartphone competitor to the iPhone. The length of time before its release ought to give you an idea of how far "in the pipeline" these devices were.

And I merely didn't see your later assertion about multi-touch. There was enough wrong in the part I'd read so far that I didn't bother reading further. Reading it now, I see I still shouldn't have bothered. Firstly, the patents do not cover multi-touch as you claim, but multi-touch gestures on a smartphone device. Second, the assertion that multi-touch must never have existed without the patent system in order for it to be considered a reasonable patent is just plain laughable. The patent system exists to promote innovation and invention. Nobody has claimed that they would cease to exist without it.

You are more than free to debate the merits of the patent system as a whole, but given the current goals of our patent system, I firmly believe that this is a worthwhile patent that describes a meaningful, non-obvious (both in implementation and holistic design concept) innovation and as such it should be protected.

I disagree with great fervor. Smartphones were clearly the next step in the evolution of mobile phones. I'm not sure if you're aware, but there were smartphones before Apple made one. They benefited greatly from everything that came before them.

Nobody's arguing that Apple invented the smartphone. The iPhone did, however, effectively redefine the word "smartphone" nearly overnight.

You do realize there's a giant fucking chasm between merely theorizing about a device and actually building it, right? The Jetsons had flying cars decades ago. Does that make the guy who figures out how to make it practical and widespread any less deserving of a patent?

This is one of the few widely-publicized patents in recent memory that I think is probably justified.

It's hard to remember back to before the iPhone existed, but devices like it weren't even on the radar of any major phone manufacturer until after Steve Jobs' announcement. Sure, the individual technologies had existed, but real progress comes from combining those technologies in completely unexpected ways. The iPhone was neither obvious nor derivative, and all the devices that have come since have benefited greatly from the research and development time and funds that Apple poured into the concept. This seems like exactly the sort of situation the patent system is meant for.

How do we know there isn't a teapot in orbit around the sun?

This.

$50,000, with a minimum of 20% tax rate ends up being $3,333/mo. That's 41% of your income, which is a completely fucking ludicrous proportion of your income to spend on housing.