Apple sued by patent trolls over iPhone camera
In America, filing for a patent is simple, and a patent is often approved by clerks with no actual knowledge of the technology in question. That makes it all too easy to file for frivolous, overly broad patents… then sue other companies for massive pay outs when they unknowingly infringe.
You don’t need any more information to recognize that the entire patent system is completely broken than to just mull over the fact that Apple is being sued over the iPhone’s camera by a small company made up of exactly two lawyers and six staff members whose entire business is patent infringement. And Apple is likely to pay.
The firm, St. Clair Intellectual Consultants, Inc. (or SCIPC), doesn’t actually manufacture hardware: instead, they purchased the rights to the patents of a small digital camera start-up, and now sue people who infringe. The patents SCIPC purchased were ridiculously broad: they cover technology that allows digital cameras to store images in different formats.
