Facebook didn't invent anything.

In reality Apple should be the real bad guy in whole patent issue.

They did invent some interesting infrastructure and dev-level stuff, which they've open-sourced.

Sure, the iPhone is a mobile phone but it's no way any more similar to what Motorola invented than how similar Motorola's mobile phone is to the original landline phone.

Instead, they're suing over ticky-tack nonsense that other people did before like:

- "slide-to-unlock" (Neonode N1m)

- clicking to call phone numbers they detect in text messages and email (Palm Treo among many, many examples - especially if you look at analogous desktop functionality like recognizing URLs in email that makes the concept obvious)

- tablets that are black rectangles with rounded corners (Knight-Ridder concept tablet from 1994, the movie version of 2001, ...)

Perhaps if more people were aware of exactly what Apple was actually suing over they'd be less supportive.

I asked that 3 times and got nothing other than downvotes...

But you are correct that nobody really cares when the defendant is a multi-billion dollar company. Facebook can look after themselves just fine. If Yahoo were suing a startup, the backlash would be far stronger.

The patent system is broken, these are not the reasons it was created!

I think patenting a lock slider by Apple is more ridiculous than patenting apparatus to change IM into email.