...getting to patent all the holes you dig with that shovel so that others can't dig similar type holes.

Long live the stack hat!

exactly!

if you wholesale replace a working (but admittedly faulty) system

I don't see a working system at all.
I see a system that has been abused beyond all recognition by a very small percentage of very powerful companies.
It's not even just the little guy getting screwed - its everyone but the fortune 500 companies, and even they've spent 100s of millions duking it out.

I thought slashdot was an IP Law blog... my bad ;-)

yeah.. except in this case, "coke" was the injunction, not Microsoft's use of H.264

You see, you're sleeping over at a friends place - and your friend's mum said that you could have coke with your dinner even though your mum said you couldn't.
You can "forget" what your mum told you and have the coke anyway, you won't get in trouble at your friends house.

But you're sure gonna get it when you get home and your mum finds out. I mean, you could lie but...

Careful with the labels there... trolling is about to be illegal in Australia, and if you go using labels like that then we'd have to try and extradite his arse...

I have a fairly simple way of breaking the deadlock on these types of decisions.

FLIP A COIN

If you're looking to go two out of three... its not the one the coin landed on... you've made your choice
If you're not looking to go two out of three... it is the one the coin landed on... you've made your choice

Thats because all the X + via computer patents ran out in the 90s

.. a thousand Barbara Streisands just walked into a room with a truckload of suppression orders.

If they keep this up, they'll tear the patent system to pieces and we'll be forced to start again.

More please. Bring it on. Its about time we got two companies in the ring who simply hate each other.

Cross-licensing agreements only benefit the companies involved - and they're a boring spectacle.
A battle to the death, however, benefits all of us.

And how do you define the difference?

Surely this would come down to a determination by the courts as with any form of negligence...

How do you sue a doctor for negligence after a surgery?
How do you sue a car maker for negligence due to a design flaw?

These are all highly specialised and highly subjective - you bring the case, the courts determine where the line is

...that should be a four letter word.

I watched this live yesterday, but my kids were at school (Australia)
I so much wanted to share with them the experience of the landing and watching the control room react with each step

The human race just put a truck on Mars using a method straight out of the best sci-fi movies and do you think I could find a copy of the raw footage of the control room anywhere?

Nope. Nothing more than the canned final minute replayed ad-nausea by every news service on the planet. The 10 minutes before that? Nothing...
Now I know at least ONE of the reasons why. Whether its ideological or simply for cash, its nothing less than censorship of the masses.

Try "Australian Ads Body Rules Companies Responsible For Own Facebook Content"