I think what he is referring to is when two mega corps would get into an IP dispute, the lawyers would bring the patent portfolios to the table. It would not be feasible to actually read through them all, so the agreement would be "surely in my large stack you are violating something and surely in your large stack we are violating something." So then you would weigh or measure the height of the stack, and the owner of the smaller would pay some royalties to the owner of the larger.

This is an exaggeration of course, but perhaps not far off the mark.

> "This is an exaggeration" Ya think? Maybe when a big company is threatening a rube. If two big companies are making a deal, you can be damn sure that they use all available software to analyze each other's portfolios, and then read, manually, the ones that seem important. And get their legal counsels for the relevant divisions to read them, too, although they probably already know them.

Cross-licensing deals are immensely complicated. You have to think about indemnifying the partners, in particular. I actually sat in the Apple v. Samsung trial for one day, because Google was indemnifying Samsung, as they frequently do for Android partners.

A big problem with Motorola was: they actually make the hardware, so Google was being sued directly. The patent infringement suits are usually against the company that makes the device.

Search for the "smartphone patent wars". There was a few year period when basically everyone involved in the industry were suing each other for pretty much anything. Even user interfaces.

The graphs of who was suing whom are hilarious by today's standards,.

That included a row over the generic concept of a tablet, where in defense the Samsung lawyers brought up prior art ... from the Kubrick movie "2001: A Space Odyssey". The astronauts in the movie are using something that looks just like a tablet.

When Blue Origin sued SpaceX over a patent on the concept of landing a rocket stage on a ship, SpaceX showed a Soviet movie with a scene where (fictionally) just that happens.

You don't patent a "concept." You patent an invention.

I'm not familiar with that particular case, but I really doubt that a clip from 2001 was dispositive of anything. Unless the patent really was as broad as "a flat computing device."

This was a design patent, not a utility patent. That means they patented the look of the tablet, meaning the non-functional parts. They did not have a patent on the "concept of a tablet."

I guess I can go look up that design patent now. It's entirely possible that 2001 did anticipate the look of the iPad, but we can also look at the record of the trial to find out how this played out.

If you know how to find the outcome of this particular legal argument I'd be very happy to read it :). I was studying at the time and a lawyer that was teaching us the basics of copyright and patent law told us about the then ongoing case.

Also, yes, you're right, forgot some key details after the 10 years. Can't believe it was that long ago.

here's some of it:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4178089/apple-inc-v-sam...

I know this case continued up to at least 2015, since that was when I went to watch for a day. When I went, there were some utility patents at issue.

"expand" how? Help me out.