Didn't George W. Bush come from Harvard? This seems to illustrate the point rolfwind was trying to make.

That's not the issue at all. It's about the lack of cultural re-use of works in the public domain because there won't be any public domain. Cultural, scientific and technical progress are at stake, not whether or not you can download Scott Joplin's recordings for free. If a composer re-uses copyrighted music, you'll bet he/she will be sued, even in Europe.

VP8 is not patent-free. Google has the patents, but it won't be charging money for it. If H264 wasn't covered by a bunch of expensive patents, VP8 would not be needed. People could put effort in improving H264 instead.

Re licensing may very well not be possible. Like most other FOSS software, VLC includes work of many people. They would have to get each and every contributing author to agree with the re-licensing. The conclusion is very likely: it cannot be done. What Apple would need to do is make a distinction between free and commercial apps.

High courts do not make the law, they just interpret it and establish boundaries. The German government can change the law if they don't like this outcome.

Most companies just sign a contract and pay because they know they have to. You never hear about that, only dubious patents and patent violations are reported. For many companies patent fees are a good source of income (also because they put real research in it). That doesn't mean the patent system works well now.

Exchange is not magically more reliable than other systems. The way it's managed makes a great difference. My company introduced it early last year. The first half year was a nightmare. We still have at least one "outage" a month. I don't blame Exchange, but a server park that's overloaded and bad management. For me, my private Gmail is much more reliable then my company's Exchange.