Maybe that person who patented the method of swinging really thought the idea was great and could save the world. I don't know. But really, patenting inventions is almost a right.

We argue for copyright protection, or the abolishment of it in the same mind. If there are no patents for software and no copyrights period, what is there to protect the risk innovators take to make the world better?

It's true of corporations as well, because they spend a lot of money on Research and Developmennt. R&D budgets are in the billions. If a company, like Apple in the current debate, can't protect that investment, a lot of people who participate at Hacker News wouldn't have jobs. They'd have to go do something in some mundane role that has negligible impact compared to something, like the iPhone.

We all cheered when it arrived and now that Steve Jobs wants to get his money for it, his investors money for it, and his employees satisfaction for a job well done, he has to fight for that value.

If, in fact, HTC did steal some ideas from the iPhone, why shouldn't Apple get compensated for the lost value? Those are phones Apple could have sold and why shouldn't Apple have every bit as much right to make a positive return on their investment in the R&D for the iPhone and the parts of the iPhone that make it special to Apple, to Jobs, and for consumers?

Because most of the cited patents are probably just restatements of research done at universities and research labs (like Bell Labs) in the 1960s and 70s. Note that I haven't read the claims to avoid polluting my own work. Most patents don't seem to explain anything, they're deliberately obscure, when they're supposed to be teaching future inventors how to reproduce the invention.

Wow, Halliburton is just synonymous with evil.