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Yep.. The right to tap on a phone number and have a dialer application start and call the phone number, or to tap on an e-mail address and have it go to the e-mail program. Or to use a data connection to complete a purchase.

These are the IPs that are being fought over right now. And it is patent trolling - bombard the patent office with thousands of patents, have them awarded as the patent office doesn't really care if the technology existed for more than decade before (clicking on a phone number and having it use the modem to dial was around on my C-64.., for example..), and when challenged says ‘take it to the courts.’

The biggest issue has been system patents and how they relate to software. The patent for making a purchase online - again, something I've done for more than two decades, is somehow a new intellectual property to patent and then go after others for doing it.

An example of the gross insanity of the present US patent system: http://www.google.com/patents/US6368227 - something that most every child has done on a swing. But it's now someone’s IP.

Geez.....the whole thing is INSANE!

Title at the link:

***************************EXCERPT*************************************

Method of swinging on a swing

A method of swing on a swing is disclosed, in which a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch induces side to side motion by pulling alternately on one chain and then the other.

Inventor: Steven Olson
Primary Examiner: Kien T. Nguyen
Attorney: Peter Lowell Olson
Current U.S. Classification: 472/118
International Classification: A63G/900

***********************************************

Steven Olson

› Overview
Abstract
Drawings
Description
Claims

Quote: “Yep.. The right to tap on a phone number and have a dialer application start and call the phone number, or to tap on an e-mail address and have it go to the e-mail program. Or to use a data connection to complete a purchase.”

Ok, then how do you do it? Tell me how to make that happen. I don’t mean go read the patent and tell me, I mean act as if you had never seen anything like it before and tell me how to do it. Ok, you have done it for decades, you say. Fine, then tell me how to translate what you have done for decades to a smart phone. I imagine that ANY invention looks simple with the benefit of hindsight.

You oversimplify the patent system and, as is typical, point to the numbnuts valueless patents to prove that it is “broken.” Just because someone has a patent doesn’t mean it is a pioneering or broad patent or that it has any value. It may be narrow and cover only an improvement. At the end of the day, the owner still has to enforce it and prove infringement. But it his the owner’s investment and its cost.

As for trolling, a patent troll is usually referred to as a company that does nothing but purchase patents and enforce them. They sell no prodcuts. Neither player in this game is a troll. They are both big boys playing in a highly competitive market.