LawPundit

Obama at University of Michigan Goes Blue on Blueprint for America in Remarks on College Affordability but He Can't Call Winner of Super Bowl XLVI Game Between Patriots and Giants

2012-01-29T12:48:00.001+01:00

GO BLUEprint!

President Obama in a speech largely on college affordability at the University of Michigan diverged to say that he can't call the winner of Super Bowl XLVI 2012 between the Patriots and the Giants because "it would get him into trouble" politically. Wise move.

The most important thing of course is that he emphasized that Americans want a future in America where "everybody" is positively involved in American life and can get AND afford an optimal education.

He emphasized that student loan money owed now tops credit-card money owed, a situation that Obama said was intolerable.

Obama especially concentrated on his Blueprint for America for a "Go Blue" audience in Ann Arbor.

Facebook Privacy Management and Lifehacker's Always Up-to-Date Guide

2012-01-28T17:33:00.005+01:00

At Lifehacker,
Whitson Gordon has
The Always Up-to-Date Guide to Managing Your Facebook Privacy

Living with Facebook Timeline: Do You Have a Choice? Blogging for the Masses

2012-01-26T18:00:00.003+01:00

At Digital Life,
Rosa Golijan writes about
How to live with the Facebook Timeline
("because you have no choice").

Essentially,
Facebook has become the blogging interface for the masses.

Netherlands Appeals Court Rules Galaxy Tab 10.1 Not Infringing of Apple Design Foolishly Registered by the EU Authorities

2012-01-26T12:42:00.000+01:00

Foss Patents by Florian Mueller is the blog of choice for anyone following the course of patent rights in the technological sector.

A must read, for example, is Mueller's posting of January 24, 2012 titled Dutch appeals court says Galaxy Tab 10.1 doesn't infringe Apple's design right.

As Mueller points out, the Dutch court followed a similar line of legal reasoning as applied in a similar case by Judge Lucy Koh in the United States (see our posting on that), by not invalidating Apple's design patent, but narrowing its scope substantially.

We are glad to see that a key role was played in this case by the prior art of a patent application filed by a Latvian, Helmars E. Ozolins, U.S. Patent Application No. 2004/0041504 A1 (see also Google Patents). According to the Dutch judge, that patent application covered 9 out of 10 of the allegedly unique design elements alleged by Apple, showing the perfidy of Apple lawsuits in this sector. Not only do these lawsuits rely on the widespread ignorance of some judges in this sector as to prior art, but they also interfere greatly with the normal process of market competition. Apple has thus far had great success in Germany with this tactic, by the way, in selected courts pandering to patent plaintiffs and manned by judges apparently out of their competence zone.

At issue in all of these patent cases is of course not the design issue at all, but the fact that Apple is trying to monopolize the markets by using lawsuits based on flimsy patents and overly broad design registrations to eliminate all the competition they can. We are surprised the EU competition authorities have not yet put a stop to it by assessing Apple with massive penalties for bad faith lawsuits and bad faith viz. fraudulent and/or negligently researched -- in terms of prior art -- patent applications and design registrations.

We do not buy Apple computer or related telecommunications products for the reason that the company has a long and sordid history as a monopolist and it has always seemed to us to be unconscionable to support such a firm in any way.

See U.S. Patent Application No. 2004/0041504 A1 ("Ozolins")
See Google Patents
See Thom Holwerda, Dutch Court Obliterates Apple's Appeal, Tab 10.1 Not Banned

USA State of the Union Message by U.S. President Barack Obama Highlighted by A Slide Show of Charts, Graphs and Media Presentations

2012-01-26T00:08:00.002+01:00

U.S. President Barack Obama's State of the Union Message

set a new standard for the use of graphics media by a President.

A slide show of important economic and other facts can be seen at

State of the Union - Enhanced Graphics

View more documents from White House

Sarkozy and Merkel, France and Germany, Have to Get it Right First in Europe

2012-01-25T23:56:00.000+01:00

The political scene in Europe.

After posting about European leadership issues yesterday at LawPundit, I read today in the German FOCUS magazine (Szenen einer Polit-Ehe, Focus Magazin) that French head Sarkozy had said to German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the two of them were the head and feet of Europe.

Merkel, who is sometimes understimated in the quickness of her wit, had retorted in a perfectly friendly way that Sarkozy alone was the head and feet of Europe while she, Angie, was the bank.

Gee, that's what I wrote a day previously without knowing this telling exchange.

French savoir-faire and German money are the key to the fortunes of the European Union generally.

Obviously, all the other nations of Europe are also important, but Germany and France have to get it right first.

Government Financing Could be Fair and Simple: Here is An Example

2012-01-25T00:06:00.002+01:00

If you and I and one other person started a company, and I owned 50%, what share of company expenditures should I pay?
33%?
You would surely say 50%,
reflecting my half of company ownership and wealth.

What share should you and the other person pay?
You would surely say 25%, reflecting your share of the company,
i.e. one-half of the other 50% of ownership.

Now, I think the same is true for government financing.
Everyone should put back into the country what they have taken out.

We could get rid of all income taxes and replace them with a single wealth tax --- equally applied – to everyone, once a year.

I have calculated that a wealth tax of about 4% on everyone would pay off the national debt in the USA in a day – i.e. the day of its assessment.

The problem with the way we assess taxes today is that it makes them look like a penalty on earning and/or entrepreneurship,
which are activities we actually want to applaud and encourage.

I am very supportive of all entrepreneurs.
Indeed, certain kinds of activities require economies of scale,
so that the existence of large corporations is essential
to enable the making of products in the modern world
– automobile manufacture would be one example, energy another.

How do we get – everyone -- to pay their fair share of government costs?

Obviously, everybody should pay taxes of some kind, regardless of wealth or income, unless they have no wealth and no income.
That is because we all profit from the things that taxes pay for.

Imagine corporations having to hire people who are not educated – a lot of that education is done with public monies, etc. So corporations should pay taxes. It is a symbiotic thing.
Similarly, we all use public roads and highways – so we should also be prepared to pay for them.

Obviously, governments (federal, state, local) have to finance their general activities, pay rent, use utilities, hire employees, etc.
Attempts to have governments finance themselves by entrepreneurship have not done well anywhere, so taxation has remained the only sensible means of government financing, outside of printing money.

What we need to achieve is better agreement among citizens as to what activities governments should have to do and how the taxes for those activities are to be fairly allocated.

To go back to our company example....
If I now own 50% of our joint company of which you own 25% and a third person owns 25%,
and I then receive 50% of the profits, as corresponding to my equity,
while you own 25% of the company and receive 25% of the profits,
how should we be taxed?

I think you would not be pleased if we were both assessed the same monetary amount of income taxes, even though I earned twice as much as you did.
But exactly that is what many pundits recommend. They say, why should I, who earned twice as much, have to pay twice as much as you.
But of course, you, who earned fewer profits, would be paying proportionately more than I am into the tax pool. That is what many are advocating.

Obviously, in a fair system, taxation should be proportional to earning and wealth. Those who profit most from the system should have to pay the most.
There is nothing wrong with that and it is not discriminatory against those who have income and/or wealth.

We could put it this way as a matter of principle (I use 10% here just as an example):

ANNUALLY,
for every $100 earned, $10 would have to paid to the government by everyone, period, no deductions, no loopholes, no exceptions from taxation (e.g. religions), EVERYBODY PAYS
and,
for every $100 of wealth gained or owned, $10 would have to be paid to the country that enabled that wealth to be acquired and which pays for the legal system and structure that protects that wealth.
No exceptions.
That would be eminently fair and governments would be adequately financed.

My approach, you see, has nothing to do with politics. It is simple arithmetic.
How we get this simple arithmetic outside of the yelling and screaming political sphere is another matter, and I know of no solution for that.

GPS Device Plant by Police on Motor Vehicle Requires Valid Search Warrant Rules U.S. Supreme Court in Landmark Case on Privacy Rights

2012-01-24T23:38:00.000+01:00

LawPundit alerted to this privacy rights landmark case previously at Landmark U.S. Supreme Court Case Upcoming Oral Argument: GPS Device Plant on Motor Vehicle by Police: When is it Legal?

The court has now decided the case, as reported by Jess Bravin at the Wall Street Journal Online in Supreme Court Reins In Police On GPS Trackers.

There was a 9-0 decision on the result in the case but an unusual 5-4 split on the legal reasoning, with Justices not aligning in their normal politically-oriented groupings.

Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor, basing the majority decision on traditional principles of property, and finding that planting of a GPS tracking device on a motor vehicle violated private property rights.

That is the classic justification for requiring search warrants of private premises. The majority reasoning held that the Constitutional protection granted by the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures of "persons, houses, papers, and effects" extended to private property such as an automobile,
i.e. this reasoning protects "places".

The legal reasoning of the other four Justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and -- surprisingly -- the very conservative Justice Alito, concurring in judgment, was that planting a GPS tracking device on an automobile violated an individual's "reasonable expectation of privacy",
i.e. this reasoning protects "people".

The search and seizure standard in effect since 1967 is Katz v. U.S., 389 U.S. 347 (1967), as written at the Wikipedia:

"Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), is a United States Supreme Court case discussing the nature of the "right to privacy" and the legal definition of a "search." The Court’s ruling adjusted previous interpretations of the unreasonable search and seizure clause of the Fourth Amendment to count immaterial intrusion with technology as a search, overruling Olmstead v. United States and Goldman v. United States. Katz also extended Fourth Amendment protection to all areas where a person has a "reasonable expectation of privacy"."

Bravin writes at the Wall Stree Journal that the majority legal reasoning did not find it necessary to apply the Katz standard here, since the traditional trespass rationale was sufficient to decide the case:

"Justice Scalia wrote that even surveillance without physical trespass may be "an unconstitutional invasion of privacy"—but, he added, there was no need to speculate on such problems until a specific case presented them to the court."

Justice Sotomayor concurred in the majority judgment, writing that Katz remains good law, but that the "reasonable expectation of privacy standard" did not replace, but only augmented the trespass standard.

In any case, we will have to wait for a future case to explain the scope of the "reasonable expectation of privacy" standard in the modern digital world.

Sarkozy and French Leadership in Europe: Roger Cohen at the New York Times Says it Well

2012-01-24T23:32:00.000+01:00

Roger Cohen at the New York Times probably has it right in The Sarkozy Effect, pointing out that Sarkozy has given France strong European and NATO leadership and also necessary domestic change, probably making him unbeatable politically.

Indeed, the political combination of Sarkozy and Merkel is very strong for Europe generally.

Sarkozy is the born leader for Europe and Merkel, representing Germany, is the moneybags of the EU. The alliance of political and monetary power is always formidable.

The two also seem to get along very well.

It is hard to imagine voters either in France or Germany dethroning this solid pragmatically-oriented duo for competing political candidates in either country, who, essentially, represent the unknown and could make the world and European situation much worse than it is.

Hat tip to CaryGEE.

Bill Clinton, Charity and Capitalism in Crisis: A Series at the Financial Times

2012-01-23T19:45:00.000+01:00

See the various contributions at the Financial Times,
including an article by former US President Bill Clinton,
on

Capitalism in crisis

Our question is whether capitalism is actually in crisis
or whether it is only America's version of capitalism that is the flaw.

Gingrich, Romney, Private Equity and Conservative Ideas About Federal Government Gone Wrong

2012-01-23T19:37:00.000+01:00

Chris Ladd at the Huntington Post tries to avert the inevitable fallout that will come from Gingrich's Risky Private Equity Critique as regards the past professional career of Mitt Romney, noting that:

"This play threatens to open conservative minds to the heretical possibility that government policies favored by free market zealots over the past generation have played a role in our economic mess."

Which, of course, they have.

Croatia Says Yes to the European Union 2-1 in EU Referendum: EU Naysayers Shown to be a Minority

2012-01-23T18:22:00.002+01:00

So where is Croatia? and who are the Croatians?
America's most famous Croatian descendent right now is surely Nick Saban,
head coach of the current American national college football champion Alabama Crimson Tide.

Martin Schulz,
President of the European Parliament,
has issued a press release that

Croatians support EU accession

The BBC reports that the vote was about 2-1 in the EU Referendum, even though a simply majority would have sufficed.

This of course is strong evidence for the strength of the European Union, contrary to all the negative hype written by the mainstream news media.

The Sellout of America Overseas: Video of The iPhone Economy at the New York Times: A Nation of Servants?

2012-01-23T18:05:00.000+01:00

So you think that electing the "right" person as President is the answer to US economic problems?

Think again.

The New York Times has an easily understood video

on The iPhone Economy

by Amanda Cox, Charles Duhigg, Xaquín G.V., Mika Gröndahl, Haeyoun Park, Graham Roberts and Karl Russell.

The country is in fact headed toward a situation where companies like Apple have all the money, you have an iPhone or similar unnecssary bauble but no job -- unless you are working as a waiter at a Chinese restaurant.

Manufacturing in the USA is rapidly disappearing and only service industries are on the rise. A nation of servants?

Made in China: American Corporate Greed Has Outsourced the Economy Overseas: What is Needed is An "Outsourcing Tax" to Penalize These Companies for Destroying the Domestic Economy

2012-01-23T15:32:00.000+01:00

We were not previously aware that President Obama had asked the deceased former Apple CEO to the effect that "What would it take to make iPhones in the United States?" and "Why that work couldn't come home?" and that the answer of that deceased former CEO had been:

"Those jobs aren’t coming back".

You admire that deceased CEO and his company?
You buy Apple products?
Are you aware of the true facts?

Apple is one of a host of outsourcing American companies that are greatly contributing to the destruction of the American economy and other Western economies as well.

In this regard, and to really understand the sustained and increasing economic problems of the United States, one should really read carefully an article on the "iEconomy" by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher at The New York Times Business Day titled

Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class.

That article explains how companies such as Apple -- in order to make ever bigger profits and stuff the pockets of its senior executives and investors -- have "sold" the American economy overseas to cheap labor nations -- where workers toil under working conditions that clearly violate human rights and, in the process, ultimately nullify all that has been gained in the modern era in bringing basic dignity and worker safety to the human working environment.

Read the above article to understand that ANYONE who buys Apple products is contributing to the destruction of his or her own domestic economy and enabling the onward march of virtual slave labor everywhere.

There was a very good reason historically why nations had protective tariffs to protect their own labor forces and to sustain their standard of living.

Once such protective tariffs were lifted, as has been done, it is clear that the manufacture of goods is shifted to nations offering the cheapest labor, regardless of the squalor of their working conditions, thus in the long term destroying everything civilized society has gained in labor progress in the last two hundred years.

Foreign cheap labor not only snuffs out job positions domestically but shifts the balance of hiring power at home to ruthless corporate executives who make ever greater profits for a small elite by leveraging their option to outsource manufacturing to cheap labor nations if domestic employees do not toe the line and accept increasingly worse and worse working conditions and wages. Increasing numbers of lockouts of employees by employers to make them accept employer demands is one sign of this negative development.

In our opinion, the only solution to this problem is to tax unmercifully the companies responsible for the damage that they are inflicting on the domestic economy by imposing a stiff "outsourcing tax" on every product containing components made in foreign countries, plus an even stiffer "damage to the economy" tax, calculated by the level of their profit-taking and the number of jobs lost to the economy by their overseas manufacturing operations.

It is said that Apple may employ as many as 1 million workers overseas. It should have to pay America for those domestic job losses -- not as a one-time payment, but in every year that outsourcing is used.

Should the company be moved out of America, for example, as some companies have done to avoid taxes, their import of products into the USA, directly or indirectly, should either be prohibited, or face MASSIVE tariffs.

America does not need companies like Apple, and, frankly, the country would be better off without them. Rather than rewarding such companies with absurd monopolistic patents, America should be penalizing these corporations for destroying domestic jobs and for fleecing American citizens and harming its economy to boot.

Executive Pay Excessive Says Broad Consensus

2012-01-23T14:08:00.000+01:00

Not just in the USA but also in the UK,
there is a broad consensus
that senior corporate executives receive vastly excessive compensation.

Julia Werdigier has the story
at The New York Times Business Day

In Britain, a Rising Outcry Over Lavish Executive Pay

The Presidential Campaign Trail: What Does It Take to Win and Who Has It?

2012-01-22T19:43:00.002+01:00

Ross Douthat at the
New York Times Sunday Review

analyzes

what a Presidential candidate needs

to win the election.

Read:
A Good Candidate Is Hard to Find

College Football Coaching Legend Joe Paterno Passes Away at Age 85

2012-01-22T19:21:00.000+01:00

The fact was that JoePa was a great coach
and helped many in their lives during his career.

And that is what we will remember.

Richard Goldstein has the story for the New York Times
at
Joe Paterno, Longtime Penn State Coach, Dies at 85.

Forbes has the The Most Overrated and Underrated Jobs

2012-01-21T14:25:00.002+01:00

To be fair, in view of our previous posting, being a CEO also has drawbacks. See The Most Overrated Jobs at Forbes.

Are America's Exectuves Overpaid? Forbes CEO Compensation List Suggests the Answer is Absolutely Yes: Private Health Insurance as a Golden Goose for CEOs

2012-01-21T12:47:00.000+01:00

So you are against Obamacare?

Maybe you should think again.

Why does health care in the USA cost twice as much as in Europe with half the results?

At the top of the nation's vastly overpaid executives who are ripping off the nation's rotten system for billions annually, is a health care executive earning more than $100 million per year for the UnitedHealth Group whose former top exec was already receiving $1 for every $700 of health insurance premiums paid into that insurer and who stepped down in the course of legal and SEC investigations. But nothing has changed.

$100 million would pay for a lot of health care to people who need it. There is zero reason for this kind of executive compensation. For what possible "service" does such an exec receive that kind of money? The need for health care can be determined by actuaries. Nothing to it.

Collecting premiums and dispensing them to people who need health care is a snap. We could get people to do that for minimum wages.

It is instructive that UnitedHealth execs have been pumping big money into lobbying against National Health Care and have been meeting with other insurers to torpedo health care legislation.

The nation needs health care.
The nation does not need these kinds of executives.

See the Forbes CEO Compensation, 2011 Compensation List
which suggests that America's executives are vastly overpaid -- for what??

Congress puts brakes on anti-piracy bills | Reuters

2012-01-20T20:59:00.000+01:00

Congress puts brakes on anti-piracy bills | Reuters: By Jasmin Melvin

WASHINGTON | Fri Jan 20, 2012 2:30pm EST

(Reuters) - Lawmakers stopped anti-piracy legislation in its tracks on Friday, delivering a stunning win for Internet companies that staged an unprecedented online protest this week to kill the previously fast-moving bills.

- Sent using Google Toolbar

A Company Can Always Fire Employees But Government Can Not Fire Americans as Citizens and Therein Lies the Difference Between Business and Politics

2012-01-19T16:59:00.000+01:00

Paul Krugman and David Brooks at the New York Times have both just published comparable takes on businessman Mitt Romney's Presidential campaign, from different political standpoints, of course.

We need in any case to remember that the last businessman to be elected President of the United States, Herbert Hoover, led the country straight into the Great Depression and in his attempt to get the country back on its feet utilized many of the instruments touted today by some conservatives as solutions....

-- they all failed.

See Paul Krugman in America Isn’t a Corporation

See David Brooks in The C.E.O. in Politics

What pro-business people sometimes fail to realize is that it is easy to slim down any corporate operation by firing half the employees. But that puts people out on the streets as inescapable problems for someone else, and usually it is the government that must handle the problem, because the government can't fire ITS citizens, it has to take care of everybody.

That is one message we would DRILL into political campaigns and into candidates.

You want to run the country?
Fine.
I personally do not care what party you represent.

But you must take care of EVERYBODY, not just a chosen few.
That is what makes it all so difficult to be a capable President.

Discount Shopping in the USA

2012-01-19T15:48:00.003+01:00

I found a useful page at TripAdvisor
on discount shopping in the USA:

see United States: Discount Shopping

The Euro, The U.S. Dollar and Money Speculators: Why Do Economists Not Concentrate on the ESSENTIALS?

2012-01-19T14:40:00.000+01:00

John Rosenthal has posted at The Weekly Standard, "The Blog" about

German Euro-Deputy: S&P Downgrade Part of American ‘War Against the Euro’

There is no question of course that money speculators and speculating financial institutions have their hands in the till whenever there are large and fast swings in currency exchange rates, as currently, where the Euro has lost substantially against the U.S. Dollar in a very short space of time.

On the other hand, one could look at COMPARATIVE PRICES to pose some questions about what realistic exchange rates should actually look like.

Our experience recently was that a laptop (notebook) personal computer (PC) sold on sale this summer at Walmart in New York was ca. HALF the price of that notebook in Germany calculated in Euros. That is quite a spread in purchasing power, even if it was a sale item, because we have never seen a lower price for that notebook in Europe, on sale or off.

Our experience a few years ago was that a top brand blazer bought at SteinMart for $250 cost 600 pounds sterling (ca. $1000) some months later on Bond Street in London, United Kingdom, a price differential of about 1 to 4.

Take a look at house prices in the UK at Globrix.com and Zoopla.co.uk and compare them to U.S. house prices at Zillow.com, which might lead one to ask whether a similarly large comparative discrepancy exists between the price of housing in the US and the UK.

House prices in continental Europe are definitely more realistic than in the United Kingdom, but even here, housing is vastly over-priced because of real estate investment in residential properties, which drives prices far beyond where they should be in terms of their actual value as places to live.

Inflated inequitable incomes also drive housing prices up beyond sensible levels. Many people who work in Luxembourg, for example, live in neighboring Germany, Belgium or France, because the cost of housing in high-income EU institution-rich and banking paradise Luxembourg is prohibitive.

What the economists should be giving us is the price of an average home as a function of the minimum wage in each country under discussion, or even better, they should be telling us the number of hours in a lifetime an average citizen must work to pay for a standardized house, nationally, AND globally, including mortgage costs of course.

THAT would be a revelation, you can be sure. Many citizens in the UK could work a lifetime and never pay for many of the houses on the UK market, a market which mirrors disproportionately the top wage earners and the wealthy. In the UK as a general rule, as you can see at THE WEEK (just search there for "properties"), outdated properties in sometimes terrible condition command outrageously high prices because a small minority of home buyers have a disproportionate share of wealth and income.

Hat tip to CaryGEE.

Apple Headquarters Like a Religious Sect?

2012-01-19T13:56:00.000+01:00

The LawPundit belongs to a generation that personally saw some of the first digital bitmaps ever (human profiles), as they were drawn "on the sly" at SLAC, the then so-called "Stanford Linear Accelerator Center", in 1968.

The importance of SLAC in the development of Silicon Valley and the digital era is often underestimated. In fact, as written at the Silicon Valley Visitor:

"SLAC hosted the first webpage in the U.S., and the above-ground klystron gallery atop the beamline is the longest building in the United States. It can be seen from I-280, which overpasses the beamline." [emphasis added]

The early invention date of at least 1968 for bitmaps has not kept the clueless USPTO, however, from granting all kinds of subsequent bitmap patents for obvious further developments of the state of the art based upon that prior art, even though no one holds a patent on basic bitmap technology.

These bitmaps at SLAC were at that time done using x's and blanks arranged in lines and columns, sort of like a drawing on graph-paper, and they were "contraband work" at SLAC, since computer operators were not suppposed to be playing with the expensive equipment designed for electron research -- such as occurred in 1968 in finding in the field of physics at SLAC the first evidence ever of quarks, the year in which the LawPundit also saw those bitmaps displayed at SLAC.

Simple "play" was at the root of the invention of bitmaps, which invention surely preceded even their use at SLAC, and that is the case for many modern inventions in the digital world. Most things were invented or anticipated by prior art long before currently and erroneously patented "alleged" inventions ever saw the light of day.

Hence, whenever I see a company trying to monopolize any technology via patents -- rather than patenting a specific invention -- red warning flags go up, and that has been the case ever since the Apple firm was founded. It is one red flag after the next for a company run by a recently deceased CEO who was quoted as saying in "The Seed of Apple's Innovation" in Business Week (12 October 2004):

"I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do."

Owning and controlling primary technology has nothing to do with inventions and discoveries. It has to do with the ruthless pilfering, acquisition, development and monopolization of the countless ideas of others for the purpose of domination of them.

If you know nothing about the true history of the Apple firm, and most people do not, then it is instructive to read "Creation Myth: Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about innovation" by Malcolm Gladwell at the New Yorker, an article published in the May, 2011 issue. Then you will know more about what really happened at Apple and who invented what.

We particularly get "activated" to set the record straight about Apple when reading stories such as at CNN Money Fortune Tech, by Adam Lashinsky, Sr., editor at large, who has an article titled The secrets Apple keeps, in which he refers to the Apple firm as the world's [allegedly] most admired company.

Admired by whom?
Not by this writer.
Never.

Never bought an Apple product.
Never will.

Apple buyers are paying a premium for hype, for the value of "envy" and for feeling like elitists, i.e. "I have it and you do not" is the main reason people buy such outrageously overpriced products.

There is a sucker born every minute and he can often be found buying these overhyped, vastly overpriced products from Apple, many of which are based on technology stolen from others, all the while monopolizing all the technology they can for themselves, and selling products, as we have previously written,
often produced by suppliers egregiously violating basic human rights.

That the conditions of secrecy prevailing at Apple headquarters make the entire operation seem like a prison-like environment with a sect-like atmosphere is not surprising.

Timothy Stagich writes in The Price of Freedom: The Purpose and Power of Free Choice:

"Giving in to the trappings of competitive society makes us submit to the domination of the small group of the elite whose primary interest is enhancing their own positions at the expense of others.

Competitive society is an elitist society with domination as their game and self-interest the aim of a small group of privileged participants."

Anyone using the Apple company as a role model for anyone in democratic society is in our opinion greatly mistaken and knows not whereof he speaks.

Even Jonathan Ive, Apple's chief inventor and former "friend" of the former CEO, has stated that:

former CEO "Steve Jobs stole my ideas".

That was and is the modus operandi of Apple.

NOTHING to be admired there.

The Patent Glut and Resulting Litigation Chaos after Chakrabarty and Diehr

2012-01-17T14:43:00.001+01:00

The world is in the midst of patent chaos,
and this is confirmed e.g. by patent litigation.

The number of patent applications at the USPTO in the United States from 1963 to 1983 increased from 90,982 to 112,040,
an average increase of ca. 1,000 patent applications per year.

In the 27 years since then,
patent applications have risen to a high of 520,277 in 2010,
an average increase of ca. 15,000 patent applications per year.

What happened?

That is easy to explain,
for at fault are two disastrous United States Supreme Court decisions:

Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303 (1980) - a 5-4 decision that allowed the patenting of living organisms and foolishly opened the door to gene patents, and
Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175 (1981) - a 5-4 decision that essentially -- and foolishly permitted "software implemented" inventions and thus -- foolishly opened the door to software patents.

Those cases were followed in turn by a host of similarly wrong court decisions, summarized at the History of Software Patents at BitLaw.com.

The remarkable thing is that patent protection -- according to the U.S. Supreme Court holdings -- is not to be granted for "obvious" inventions, e.g. that are simply normal developments of the state of the art to someone versed in that field, a person called a PHOSITA = Person Having Ordinary Skill In The Art. To obtain a patent, the invention has to be "non-obvious".

Since the USPTO grants about 50% of all patent applications, this would mean that something like 250,000 patents have been or will be granted for the 2010 patent applications -- all, and this is THE LAW -- by definition, for "non-obvious" inventions and discoveries.

For the patent law industry, it is as if progress were somehow the march of the non-obvious,

whereas, in fact, exactly the opposite is the case.

Normal technological progress is obvious, and follows the path of where things are leading anyway, rather than where they are not leading.

Almost all new developments in high tech sectors are made by people researching in "obvious areas" defined by "the state of the art".

Almost no one is researching in areas that are "not obvious", where discoveries and profit are most unlikely.

In fact, the bulk of patent applications are made by mainstream technological companies researching the obvious next step in their field, and the patents they seek relate to normal research progress made by normal people, not by inventors or discoverers finding non-obvious things.

Accordingly, the current state of patent law is inexcusable, as it involves the granting of hundreds of thousands of patents for clearly OBVIOUS and PREDICTABLE discoveries in the sense that they are anticipated by the state of the art -- and hence -- also anticipated by prior art, as forming that state of the art.