LG presses for PS3 US sales embargo
Tit for tat patent spat
LG has set the legal attack dogs on Sony, over Blu-ray playback tech used in the PS3, Bravia TVs and some Sony VAIO laptops and some cameras and camcorders.
Where better to do this than the US, where Korean vendor is seeking to stop sales of Sony products that allegedly infringe four LG patents.
LG filed the complaint with the US International Trade Commission in response to a suit filed by Sony with the organisation in December 2010, seeking an import ban of LG smartphones, according to Florian Mueller, the German free software activist.
"It's like 'you touch my smartphones and I bomb your console'," he wrote on the FOSS Patents blog.
Hat tip to Florian for the news tip
COMMENTS
And the loser is...
Of course, the biggest looser from all this and similar nonsense is you and I - the end users/consumer. It means that the products you can buy are not as good as they could be because of the numerous, and often silly, patents that companies hold. A manufacturer often takes the cheaper route (and who can blame them) of working around a patent, rather than buying into it. Of course, the patented method is quite often the best (and often obvious) method, which means the product on the shelf is never quite as good as it could be.
Having worked in the consumer electronics industry for many years, I have seen this happen time and time again.
And once again, patents are an obstacle to competition
Of course we don't know the merits of Sony's claim against LG, but it does rather seem that LG's claim against Sony is based more in a desire to wreak retribution than actually pursue real infringement - especially as Sony is one of the lead developers of BluRay and one of the founding members of the BDA. It does rather seem that the licenses from the BDA that all bluray player makers have would cover all of this, so LG is most likely shooting blanks
Of course, the US legal system being what it is, it will cost millions of dollars and many months for that to be determined.
There is two thing that prevent progress....
Patents and Religion.
sony
Sony stealing technology, surley not these are the jead of the MPAA & RIAA & again they are in the news for theft... or is it copywrite infringement, nope according to sony its theft!
Go Patents!
Stealing productivity from Real GDP since the beginning of the Computer Revolution! Nothing like reinventing the wheel over and over again in slightly different ways and then letting lawyers fight over whether they are different enough or not.
