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...

I don't know which patents Apple counter-sued with, but some are probably the same as the HTC lawsuit.

Actually, that PDF document of mine makes it easy to see overlaps between Apple's disputes with HTC and Motorola :-) What I don't show in that chart is Nokia (will be a separate PDF), but for the two Android device makers it's easy to see the overlaps in the diagram.

When Apple countersued Motorola initially (29 October -- page 9 of the PDF), the 6 patents selected were 5 new ones and 1 that was previously asserted against HTC. But by seeking declaratory judgment concerning 12 patents Apple previously used against HTC, Motorola had already started a dispute over 60% of the patents Apple asserted against HTC. The declaratory judgment move was basically Motorola suing itself over Apple patents in order to prove those patents invalid or non-infringed. It was obvious that Apple wasn't going to let that happen, so last week Apple asserted those patents against Motorola in another suit.

Your sarcasm is outstanding, but since only a limited number of people have spent more time talking to politicians (not to members of US Congress, however) about software patents, here's something to consider.

The patent system -- for better or worse -- exists the way it does. Any proposal to depart from it would be a fundamental paradigm shift in the realm of intellectual property rights, and the burden of proof is on those demanding such radical change.

If the opponents of software patentability had a strong case that software patents really do a lot of harm and cause a lot of economic suffering (companies going out of business, having to lay off large numbers of people etc.), politicians would certainly act. But since the IT industry -- I mean companies of all sizes -- with only a few exceptions doesn't take action against those patents, it's impossible for a non-programmer politician to conclude that there's a need for abolition.

You can't win a political debate over a matter of economic policy unless you have business arguments. In this case, for abolition to succeed there has to be irrefutable evidence of harm. If there were harm (other than people shaking their heads at the things that often get patented), company CEOs (from companies of all sizes) would take political action. Since that isn't the case, it looks to the average politician like there are just some people who have ideological/philosophical objections to software patents, and no one cares whether those objections are right or wrong. All that matters is what the economy wants and needs.

icebike just stated what some of the media reports appeared to suggest a month ago. Right here as part of this Slashdot thread I've posted this explanation.

I wasn't going to reply to someone who describes my hard work on this as leaving "taint", but here goes anyway ;-)

You do raise an important point: cross-licensing. However, cross-license deals come in all shapes and forms. In a few cases the parties will be on an equal footing; in most cases one party will be considerably if not hugely stronger. In the latter case, a "settlement" will also be announced, but in economic and strategic terms, one party will end up losing.

For now I'm rather skeptical of the impact the patent portfolios of the Android camp can have on their competitors. I gave a quick overview of the five strongest areas of Motorola's patent portfolio in this recent blog post and I also pointed out that Google makes a weak showing against Oracle because Google still hasn't countersued. When I wrote that blog post, Google had already had three months since Oracle sued. Now there's been almost another month and Google still doesn't seem to have found any patents with which it could build a serious counterthreat against Oracle...

If I understand the PDF in the article properly, Apple only went after HTC. Motorola then jumped Apple for other reasons and Apple countered. If Apple was initiating all the lawsuits, I'd say this was true, but that does not seem to be the case.

While you are right that Motorola drew first blood against Apple in terms of actually suing, Motorola's Delaware request for declaratory judgment makes the following claim: "Apple has professed rights [...] based on Motorola Mobility's activities related to Motorola Mobility's Droid, Droid 2, Droid X, Cliq, Cliq XT, BackFlip, Devour A555, i1 and Charm products" (you can find the details of that case listed on page 22 of my PDF)

I don't know what exactly Motorola means by "Apple has professed rights" and whether that description given by Motorola is true, but it could mean that Motorola launched a pre-emptive strike. The fact that Apple's suits against Motorola were filed only 23 days later (Motorola attacked on 06 October 2010, Apple filed suits against Motorola on 23 October 2010) -- not a whole lot of time to prepare suits of that kind -- also suggests that Apple would have sued at any rate.

But let me make this clear as well: I don't mean to be judgmental about someone who sues. It would be too simplistic a view to say that the one who sues is automatically doing evil. Lawsuits happen if parties can't reach an agreement on something, and one would have to know about the nature and content of all of the previous communication between the parties to know what resulted in the filing of a suit. In many cases one would probably conclude that it's an act of aggression, but in other cases one might have a different or more differentiated perspective if only one knew all of the facts.

There was some confusion out there about the ITC staff (Office of Unfair Import Investigations, OOUI) report, and this quote from your post reflects them:

Apple lost just about their entire claim against Nokia, when half the patents they were seeking to enforce were declared invalid by the FTC, and the rest dismissed as not being infringed.

No.

1. As I explained in this recent blog post, Apple's ITC assertions against Nokia were split into two parts. The staff report that the press reported on in early December related to only 4 of the 10 patents Apple originally asserted against Nokia.

2. That staff opinion is just an opinion, not a definitive dismissal. My Apple vs. Android chart does mention that some patents were dropped from the ITC cases between Apple and HTC: on pages 8 ("Move #7 - Apple drops 4 patents from ITC complaint against HTC") and 10 ("Move #9 -- HTC drops 1 patent from ITC complaint against Apple"). But the instances I mention in my chart were definitive partial terminations of those cases. The ITC staff opinion published a month ago on one Apple v. Nokia case is not definitive. It's an opinion and the ITC's Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) can agree or disagree with it. There have been many cases already in which the ALJ judge took decisions that were very different from the staff reports. I've seen a long list of cases in which the staff then actually appealed the ALJ's decision, which is clear evidence that decisions deviate from those staff reports quite often. The staff report is an opinion, and I don't mean to downplay the importance of the staff and its reports, but that is just not a dismissal of claims (let alone the invalidation of patents).

3. Even if some patents lost before the ITC, they might (as my blog post mentioned under item 1 explains) still be enforced in a US federal district court. My chart makes that distinction in connection with the patents dropped from ITC cases. HTC's '183 patent is grayed-out from Move #9 on because it was only asserted in the ITC so far and they withdrew it. By contrast, Apple's '867, '131, '852 and RE'486 patents were only dropped from an ITC complaint but Apple does enforce them against Motorola now in a federal district court, so the patents are still alive.

4. The chart this article refers to is purely about Apple vs. Motorola and Apple v. HTC. I'm going to do the same visualization for the Apple-Nokia conflict as well but it will be a separate document because otherwise things would become too complex to fit in a single chart. In fact, I already have that one in place for the most part, so it will become available pretty soon. (Also for Microsoft vs. Motorola and Oracle vs. Google, by the way.)

I accidentally posted without being logged in, and the passage "then does a settlement" is incomplete. I meant a settlement without any financial incentive.