Slight modification to the GP post, then:

From the post you're replying to:

Add to that that hotels have mandatory annual inspections, with a fire inspector who walks through and checks all of the alarms and extinguishers. You don't do that in your apartment, I'm sure, and yet it's something a hotel tenant relies on.

If the authorities want to stop you from calling, they can already tell the providers to block your IMEI. They can also track you as you move between towers, listen in to your phone calls if they want, and read your SMS messages. But seriously, the providers can already "brick" your phone - otherwise, how do you think they shut off service when you stop paying your bills? How do you think they know to charge you for your long distance calls? And similarly, the police/NSA/CIA/FBI/whomever already has all of those abilities, simply by telling the phone company to give them whatever they want.

Enabling a kill switch is not really creating a new kill switch... It's simply giving you, the purchaser, the right to tell the phone company to block the IMEI using the same tools that law enforcement does now. It literally costs them nothing to allow, since it already exists, but, as noted in the Summary, will result in a huge drop in the number of re-purchased phones after theft/breakage... phones that are frequently re-purchased at full price, due to the multi-year contract lock-ins. This is all about money, not freedom.

Or, they could throw each box into temporary quarantine in a vacuum chamber (or one filled with an inert gas) for 10 minutes "to be safe against the unintentional transportation of undesirable bacteria". How long can Assange hold his breath?

That's like saying the police can't search you without a warrant, because it's a fourth amendment violation. Sure they can, they just can't use anything they find against you in court. For example, if they search you and find a crack pipe and destroy it but never charge you with possession, you're going to have a really tough time alleging a violation of your civil rights without first admitting that you were carrying.

Similarly, the host country can open the diplomatic bag, find the drugs/weapons/person, and destroy them... leaving the sending country in the unenviable position of either letting it go, or claiming that their rights were violated regarding a diplomatic bag that itself violated the Convention. It's like those Russian tanks that Ukraine destroyed - sure, it was an act of war to blow them up... but it was an act of war for them to be in the Ukraine in the first place, so Russia sure isn't going to be the one to complain.

The "diplomatic pouch" concept comes from the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, art. 27:

However, the next section kills your plan:

Diplomatic pouches have been opened in the past when they contained, for example, mines, drugs, and even a person - and they weren't violations of the Convention, because they were no longer diplomatic pouches.

I should've also noted his use of "originality", a copyright term that has no meaning with patents. And "manager" instead of primary or SPE.

No Examiner calls themselves a "reviewer"; it takes more than 10 seconds even to approve an application; and no Examiner would refer to continuations or RCEs as "refiles".

Suspicious post from anonymous poster that just happens to confirm every anti-patent bias is suspicious.

You must have a much heavier suitcase than I do.

"That's not my department." - W. von Braun

Oh, come on, that's a distinction without any teeth. I'd say the bigger difference is that the first two are one unit per level, while the latter two allow horizontal expansion. The fact that two have microtransactions and the other two don't is mostly irrelevant.

Collusion isn't bad, in and of itself. Say you hire someone to paint your house - you're technically "colluding". The issue is when it becomes an anti-trust violation. And the DoJ has looked at patent pools and determined that they're not always automatically anti-trust violations. They certainly can be, but the mere fact that the participants are "colluding" doesn't make it any worse than any other contract. Instead, there has to be things like illegal patent extension or unfair licensing based on market share or some other feature.

First, since when is double-dipping an issue? A design can be protected by both trade dress and design patents. A copyrighted character can also be a trademark (see, e.g., Mr. M. Mouse). The two protections are not coextensive, so what's wrong with having both?

Second, why are you arguing for copyright - with a lifetime+90 year term - as opposed to patents - with a 20 year from filing term? Copyright tends to be much more abusive in that way.

And third, software isn't well protected by copyright. Copyright is useful when that specific article is the one you want: you want Picasso's Guernica, not Billy Bob's Smear of Paint on a Wall; you want "The Avengers" movie, not the Mockbuster "The Revengers"; you want to read about Harry Potter and his Half-assed Plot or whatever Rowling has cranked out, not Larry Kotter and the Temple of Doom. It's why the RIAA/MPAA love copyright so much. And it works for operating systems, since you do want Mac OS or Windows as opposed to Marc OS or Winbows.
But it doesn't work very well for, say, TinyTower- er, DreamHeights- er, SimTower- er, Theme Hotel. Or, say, any one of these 78 games like Minecraft. Copyright doesn't protect against any rebuilding of the same game, provided different sprites and textures are used and the code is original, even if nearly identical. It doesn't prevent reverse engineering, and doesn't prevent the kind of copying Zynga specializes in.

You patent your improvement on the existing patent, and then cross-license with the other patent owner. Or you go ahead with your idea, and pay a couple hundred a month to the patent owner. Either way, net win for you.

Tell that to Nimblebit and everyone else Zynga has run over while being second-to-market.