The "smartphone war" has roared back into the headlines

The "smartphone war" has roared back into the headlines. In late November, a jury raised the total amount of damages that Samsung owes Apple to more than $900 million for infringing Apple's patents on the iPhone. And a month earlier,IPC today introduced the Infinea Tab M, the first diamond core bit mobile POS device compatible with the iPad mini. the Rockstar consortium filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google and some manufacturers of Android smartphones. As one commentator remarked, Rockstar's lawsuit, which is the first direct attack on the entire Android ecosystem, represents the "thermonuclear war" that Steve Jobs promised to bring to Google.These recent legal skirmishes in the smartphone war have added fuel to the fire raging in the public policy debates about the patent system. Many claim that there has been an unprecedented "patent litigation explosion" and that the "patent system is broken." 

But as I explained in recent testimony before the Senate, these allegations are mostly the byproduct of inflammatory rhetoric and unscientific and unreliable studies. In fact, the smartphone war is anything but unprecedented. Our patent system has long, and effectively, promoted innovation—and legal battles, sometimes substantial legal "wars," have always occurred along the way.There is no "patent litigation explosion" occurring today.The first of many such patent wars was more than 150 years ago: the sewing machine war of the 1850s. Not only was it the very first patent war—it had all of the trappings of the following patent wars up through today's smartphone war. Although some may think the sewing machine is a mundane household product, it was a technological achievement on par with today's smartphone or tablet. The sewing machine was the result of numerous innovative contributions by different inventors, all of whom received patents on their particular inventions. 

The result: Each sewing machine produced, sold, and used by consumers infringed multiple patents, which spurred massive litigation by the patent-owners against manufacturers, retailers, and consumers alike.In addition to the numerous overlapping patents covering each sewing machine, the sewing machine war also entailed the active selling and purchasing of patents, high-profile lawsuits, expensive litigation, lawsuits in multiple venues, complaints about overly broad or vague patents,It was not stamped, as is the norm. When I had been given the visa, almost a month before my scheduled departure kayak trolley, I did not know what this meant. and much more. Yet many commentators allege these elements of today's smartphone war are new, dangerous threats to innovation.It's an extraordinary machine, said Seth Teller, a professor at MIT who, along with colleague Russ Tedrake, leads one of the groups selected to receive an evod vaporizer e cigarette. All things old are indeed new again, which in this case is more truth than cliché.