I think this case illustrates one of those landmark moments when you get to choose the forest or the trees. There has to be an equitable middle ground where we

I think this case illustrates one of those landmark moments when you get to choose the forest or the trees. There has to be an equitable middle ground where we don't have to throw out the baby with the bath water but the direction of these patent lawsuits are troubling. For me the greatest adverse affect is on open-sourcing software. Open sourcing software is not free, there is a very real cost to the people who share even without lawsuits. If the project is interesting enough, sure people will fork it and contribute but you also get half-brained support requests for people who can't get your project to compile or what not. With the possibility of lawsuits it becomes even more tempting to just keep your code locked away. For a small or medium-sized company it pays to keep any innovative code locked away internally to avoid patent trolls. If these claims go through and Android falls on the mercy of Apple to license the technology at whatever price they name if they are gracious enough to, then we have to ask ourselves long and hard, will it be worth the wait until these patents expire? Is there any meaning to having Android perennially over-priced compared to Apple for the next several decades so that Apple wins big with any smartphone sale?