With the recent Apple vs. Samsung lawsuit I've started wondering about whether or not patents are a benefit to the tech world or a menace. It seems that nowadays they're just used by big corporations to sue anything that looks just the slightest bit similar. What do you guys think?

Menace, because it means not everyone can use the same tech and improve it. Also those companies end up just having money bitch fights, making more time be wasted

>>1
You're only taking the recent lawsuit into play?
Keep in mind Apple's been rather busy lately with the lawsuits, even going as far as trying to sue a school in Canada over using an apple in it's school logo. Apple's philosophy is in proprietary closed source software, so they're one of the more lawsuit-paranoid companies.
That said, whether or not lawsuits are detrimental to innovation:
Personally I think so. If we claim that company A has a right to X, and company B has a right to Y, then nothing can really move forward without having those features missing.
(For anyone unaware, the *current* lawsuit of Apple v. Samsung is over a multitude of general features, such as the "slide to unlock" feature on smartphones that's become basic for some time now.)

Patents are by far menacing the tech world. For starters all the new jazz about hybrid technology is bull. Farraday created the technology, and we are finally using it 40-50 years later. Why did it take so long to start using this technology? Becuase the oil corporations bought the patents for it, and only used it when they see a profit in it for them, and in this case it was 40-50 years later. Think if hybrids were produced in the 60's or 70's. What would the automobile be like today? Would they be a lot more energy efficient?

Concerning the software, a bunch of the same programmers created software for both Apple and Samsung. So in a way it is the same software. However, what if people focused on just making the software, and/or hardware, better instead of bickering for the rights?

I think they're not a bad idea, but ownership should only be possible to the person who submitted it, not a company or group.
And after the death of that person it should become public property, as in nobody owns the rights or will ever own them again.
The same should apply to copyright.

>>4>>5 I wish this was the case too.. we WOULD have that shiny space port, moon, and mars base

patents and any such is a definite dead weight against progress, I understand that at root they were supposedly intender for allowing any inventor to get a fair reward for using their inventions, but they are REALLY off track now, patents only obstruct the way of progress and the people who would create new ways of using any item (like apple used to do, wait for something new then use it in a new or "better" way) now are too scared of even tampering with any such due to fear of being sued.