Should Apple stop its patent war? How about Intellectual Ventures? Should Microsoft stop taxing Android makers? Some arguments paint with too broad a brush. Wh

Should Apple stop its patent war? How about Intellectual Ventures? Should Microsoft stop taxing Android makers? Some arguments paint with too broad a brush. Where patents are concerned, especially software patents, the arguments are far too narrow. Of course Apple should end its patent war. Unlucky for Apple, if it ends its patent war while Microsoft continues to extract tribute, Apple loses. And Microsoft should end the war. Oops, it loses too. In the end, everyone who unilaterally stops playing the game loses. So everyone should end the war. And I don’t mean, “Return to an uneasy oligopoly where new entrants are forced to pay tribute to the existing patent-hoarding overlords.” I mean, abolish the patents. beat the swords into ploughshares. p.s. Exercise for the reader: If technology patents are eliminated and anyone can do anything, does that mean that everyone will instantly engage in a copycat race to the bottom, and the only winners will be companies that have a service that can’t be copied? if so, why aren’t Google and Facebook spending billions lobbying to end patents? It seems like they would be the big winners if the price of phones, tablets, and computers fell to nearly zero.