Over at Groklaw PJ writes about the coming wave of judicial sanity,
Judges are definitely beginning to notice that they are being used not to resolve real legal issues, but as a proxy for a competition struggle, and I don’t think they much care for it. Judge Posner said the US patent system is “dysfunctional”. When judges start to say things like that, the tide can begin to turn. It reminds me a little of Righthaven-style copyright infringement business plans that at first seemed to be working, making a list of gazillions of anonymous infringers at once and asking the courts for their names prior to identifying who actually was or wasn’t infringing because it was cheaper than suing them individually, until judges began to figure out what it was all really about and shut it down hard.
Patents are trickier, and Apple isn’t Righthaven, but slide to unlock? Apple wants to shut down an entire product line over slide to unlock? Are they kidding? Hopefully, somebody will show the judge who just ruled the patent viable that there is prior art.